Exxon's Liberia Well is Dry

ExxonMobil’s first exploration well offshore Liberia, in west Africa, is dry. Canadian Overseas Petroleum, the US super-major's partner with a 17% interest in Liberia’s block LB, said December 19 that the Mesurado-1 well reached final total depth on December 17.

No hydrocarbons were indicated by the logging while drilling operations performed across the targeted intervals, said COPL, and as such operator Exxon (with 83% interest) had advised that no further logging operations will be conducted and the well will be plugged and abandoned. The well was started on November 21 about 50 miles offshore in some 2,500 metres of water. The well, which was targeting oil in a sequence of Late Cretaceous Santonian aged sands, intersected 145 metres of net sand of which 118 metres were deemed to be reservoir quality. 

The well was drilled by Seadrill West Saturn (Photo credit: Seadrill)

"We are naturally disappointed by the lack of hydrocarbons in the targeted reservoir sands in the Mersurado-1 well" said COPL CEO Arthur Millholland. He said additional work would now be done on the block’s 3D seismic to re-evaluate the other leads mapped on LB-13.

He added that appraisal drilling of COPL’s oil appraisal project offshore Nigeria on OPL 226 would begin.

Separately UK-listed Sirius Petroleum has reached an integrated services management contract with Schlumberger for a multi-well drilling campaign beginning 1H 2017 of Sirius's Ororo oil and gas field in shallow water offshore Nigeria that may be expanded to include other potential offshore assets.

Mark Smedley