Chariot Makes Significant Gas Discovery Off Morocco

Oil and gas company Chariot has made, what the company described as, a significant gas discovery at the Anchois-2 well located on the Lixus license off Morocco.

Chariot has a 75 percent interest and operatorship of Lixus in partnership with the Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines which holds the remaining 25 percent.

The company said that the Anchois-2 well was safely and efficiently drilled to a total measured depth of 8,240 feet by the Stena Don drilling rig in 1,250 feet of water.

A comprehensive evaluation of the well was done through wireline logging, including petrophysical evaluation, subsurface formation testing including reservoir pressures and gas sampling, sidewall cores, and wellbore seismic profiles.

Preliminary interpretation of the data confirms the presence of significant gas accumulations in the appraisal and exploration objectives of the Anchois-2 well with a calculated net gas pay totaling more than 330 feet, compared to 180 feet in the original Anchois-1 discovery.

The appraisal target – Gas Sand B – has a calculated total net gas pay of more than 165 feet in two stacked reservoirs of similar thickness. The upper reservoir is a continuation of a reservoir drilled in the original discovery well, Anchois-1, with the lower reservoir being newly identified.

As for exploration targets - Gas Sands C, M, and O – were successfully encountered with multiple gas-bearing intervals across a gross interval of 820 feet measured distance with no water-bearing reservoirs identified, materially exceeding pre-drill expectations.

The previously discovered Gas Sand A was not targeted in the Anchois-2 well, due to the intention of evaluating it in the subsequent Anchois-1 re-entry operations. However, Anchois-2 encountered gas-bearing sands at this level providing important additional subsurface data. According to Chariot, high-quality reservoirs were encountered in all gas sands.

Further analysis will be undertaken to fully understand the positive implications on gas resources within the expanded Anchois field and the scale of the potential gas development. De-risking of numerous additional material exploration prospects within the Lixus license area with similar seismic attributes to the Anchois discovery is now considered to be low risk.

Chariot said that the well would be suspended for potential future re-entry and completion as a production well in the development of the field.

The Stena Don rig will then move to the Anchois-1 gas discovery well to perform re-entry operations with the objectives of assessing the integrity of the previously drilled well, and if successful, providing a future potential production well for the development of the field.

“I am delighted to announce that Chariot, as well as conducting a successful appraisal well operation, has made a significant gas discovery at the Anchois-2 well which materially exceeds our expectations. We continue to conduct further analysis on the data collected from the well, but as it stands, we believe the result is transformational for the company,” Adonis Pouroulis, Acting CEO of Chariot, said.

“This is a tremendous outcome[…]. With the recently announced key terms of gas offtake with a prominent international energy group, interest from two highly regarded institutional lenders to provide debt finance, an ongoing collaboration with a leading constructor of offshore gas projects, and now this successful gas well result, the Anchois project is getting closer to helping provide a clean transitional fuel to support Morocco's industrial and economic growth,” he added.

To contact the author, email bojan.lepic@rigzone.com