Ophir unveils new gas discovery

Oil and gas producer Ophir Energy has announced its third major discovery of 2012, with the latest good news coming from Equatorial Guinea.

The group said that the Tonel-1 well in Block R, Equatorial Guinea, is an 800bn cubic feet (133m barrels of oil equivalent) gas discovery. It is the third discovery on the block by Ophir and the fifth to date.

The firm encountered a 182m gas column in the mid-Miocene sandstone target, with a total of 117m of net pay.

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The discovery puts cumulative de-risked, recoverable gas resources in block R at around 367m barrels of oil equivalent (boe), which means that resources are homing in on the level which would make a second liquefied natural gas train on Bioko Island..

The Erik Raude rig will now move to undertake appraisal and satellite exploration drilling around Ophir's previous Fortuna-1 gas discovery. The Fortuna East and Fortuna West wells have been designed to appraise elements of the Miocene age Fortuna Fan as discovered by the Fortuna-1 well in order to convert discovered resource into contingent (2C) resource, and to separately target medium risk amplitude supported, stacked secondary targets of Miocene to Pliocene age.

Nick Cooper, Chief Executive Officer of Ophir said: "Tonel represents the fifth and largest gas discovery on Block R to date and importantly represents a significant step towards the commercial threshold volumes required for a second train of LNG from Equatorial Guinea.

"The drilling programme will now return to the vicinity of our earlier Fortuna-1 discovery. The Fortuna East-1 and Fortuna West-1 wells are designed to appraise 603bn cubic feet (101m boe) of the Fortuna Fan discovery and also to target additional cumulative exploration volumes of 833bn cubic feet (139m boe). The three well campaign is due to complete by September."

Ophir operates the block with an 80% stake.

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