Cairn Energy in its operational update on Thursday, announced that operations on the SNE-4 appraisal well offshore Senegal has been successfully completed after drilling, coring and logging.

According to the company, the well is currently being plugged and abandoned. Initial results on the well confirm the presence of oil bearing upper reservoir sands of comparable quality to those stumbled upon as gas bearing somewhere else in the field.

Situated in 942m water depth and about 85km offshore in the Sangomar Offshore block, the SNE-4 well reached the intended total depth (TD) of 2,944m below sea level.The well came across a gross oil column of approximately 100 metres, similar to what was discovered in the SNE-1, SNE-2, SNE-3 and BEL-1 wells. It also confirmed the extension of reservoirs in the eastern extent of the SNE field over 5 km to the east and down dip of the SNE-3 well.

“We have now drilled four successful appraisal wells in Senegal and the results to date of the multi-well evaluation programme, has confirmed the scale and potential of this world class asset. We have gathered a very large volume of data from operations to date and we look forward to progressing our long-term, multi-field, multi-phase exploitation plan to maximize value in Senegal. We see clear potential to access additional cost savings from the current lower operating environment in respect of planned future activity,” Simon Thomson, Chief executive of Cairn Energy told Energy-pedia.

The SNE-4 appraisal well is the sixth well to be spud by the company and the fourth to be completed this year offshore Senegal.

Anita Fatunji