FOGL is to drill two wells in the deep-water area of its licences in 2012. FOGL has contracted the Leiv Eiriksson rig to undertake this drilling programme. The rig arrived in the Falkland Islands in early 2012 where it will initially drill two wells for Borders and Southern Petroleum Plc. (B&S), before commencing the FOGL drilling programme.
A great deal of work has gone into the planning of the FOGL drilling campaign and over the preceding years a large amount of data has had to be collected to so that the drilling can take place.
Seismic data was acquired from 2004 to 2007 and again in 2011, CSEM in 2007, site surveys in 2009 and 2011 and metocean data, from permanent current meters, in 2009/10. Well planning essentially started in 2009 with the drilling of three, 200m deep, geotechnical boreholes. This data helped with the planning of the shallow section of the Toroa well (FI 61/05-1) and has been extensively used in the planning of the deep water programme.
The first well in the FOGL programme will be on the giant Loligo prospect. A second well will also be drilled by FOGL using the Leiv Eiriksson and site surveys have been acquired over the following prospects: The Nimrod Complex and the Vinson prospect in the Tertiary Channel Play, the Scotia or Hero prospects in the Mid Cretaceous Fan Play and the Inflexible or Endeavour prospect in the Springhill Sandstone Play. Options that are currently being considered depend upon the results of the first well on Loligo. The Fold Belt Play in the south west of the FOGL acreage, is being tested by B&S at their Stebbing prospect. Similar features exist within the FOGL acreage and the results of the well will be closely monitored. In addition the B&S, Darwin well is targeting a tilted fault block which again shows great similarities with several prospects in the FOGL portfolio (Inflexible, Thulla etc.). Depending on the results of Darwin FOGL may consider a well on Inflexible as the second well in the programme.
FOGL’s main focus is on the two younger plays, the Tertiary Channel and the Mid Cretaceous Fan play. FOGL has been working on the Mid Cretaceous play for some time but it was only in late 2009, when the seismic data had been fully reprocessed, that it became clear that this major new play was viable. The play is analogous to the ones being successfully targeted in West Africa (the Tullow Jubilee field in Ghana and other discoveries along that margin) and the general geology, depositional setting and even the AVO response (Class II response over Scotia and Hero) are remarkably similar. The two main prospects, Scotia and Hero, both contain prospective resources in excess of 1 billion bbls. One of the key features that makes this play so attractive is that the reservoir sands sit directly above the mature Aptian oil source rocks which were sampled in the DSDP wells to the East of the FOGL acreage.
View the 2012 Drilling Programme (PDF) presentation.
