By Jamie Ashcroft
The Koba-1 well will take 50 days to drill down to 2,700 metres.
Operations in Morocco’s emerging oil and gas industry gathered pace again today, with updates from two explorers.
Longreach Oil & Gas(CVE:LOI), which owns a stake in the Foum Draa well, the first offshore well to spud, today revealed that drilling has now begun on its 50% owned Sidi Moktar onshore project.
The Koba-1 well will take 50 days to drill down to 2,700 metres. It is the first of two planned wells at Sidi Moktar and it is targeting two gas targets, together estimated to host 350bn cubic feet of gas and 21mln barrels of condensate.
Longreach chief Andrew Benitz declared the start of drilling as a major milestone in the company’s plans.
The Toronto listed explorer – which has plans to join AIM later this month – owns a 2.5% carried stake in the Cairn Energy (LON:CNE) operated programme on the Foum Draa block. Cairn’s well got underway late last month.
Irish firm Fastnet Oil & Gas (LON:FAST), meanwhile, was back in the news this week as Kosmos Energy, the operator of the Foum Assaka block revealed drilling would start in the first quarter of 2014.
Kosmos, which last month brought BP into the venture, also revealed as part of a broader technical presentation that the first target will be the Eagle prospect, which it estimates at around 360mln barrels.
Last week, Fastnet advanced its own farm-out to sell a portion of its 18.75% stake in Foum Assaka.
The bidding process has now ended, with one unnamed potential buyer now entering into an exclusivity agreement so that the finer points of the deal can be negotiated.
Fastnet is also advancing plans to drill an appraisal and test well on its onshore Tendara Lakbir licence, which is estimated to host gross recoverable resources between 30.1bcf to 891.9bcf, with a ‘best’ estimate of 310.5bcf. The appraisal drilling will begin next year.
Several other projects are also being pursued both on and off shore Morocco, and as such many other catalysts and milestones are expected in the weeks and months ahead.
