Successful core drilling on the south coast of England has brought high hopes for UK Oil and Gas Investments (UKOG).
The company is drilling Kimmeridge Limestone samples at the Broadford Bridge-1 exploration well in the Weald Basin.
A core sample, totalling 330 ft in length, has been recovered from the Kimmeridge Limestone 4 (“KL4”) target zone at the 100%-owned well.
In a statement, the firm said that mobile light oil continued to be observed seeping from multiple sections of fractured KL4 calcareous shales and limestones throughout the cored section.
Wet gas readings maintained high levels throughout the coring, being “almost identical” to those seen at the Horse Hill-1 (“HH-1”) Kimmeridge Limestone oil discovery, 27 km to the north east.
Mobile Kimmeridge oil was also recovered from the drilling fluid. Further core will be taken through the deeper KL3 target zone.
Stephen Sanderson, UKOG’s executive chairman, said: “The coring programme continues to deliver positive results and important new insights into this continuous oil accumulation, the first of its kind discovered in the UK.
“Following the KL3 and contingent KL2 coring programmes, we will run electric logs, set the final 7-inch steel casing and then, following the grant of the remaining necessary regulatory permissions, move straight to extended flow testing operations around the second half of July.”
UKOG said the presence of light mobile oil in fractured Kimmeridge shales is “highly significant”.
The firm added: “At first look, this corroborates the finding from Horse Hill-1 that oil production was likely derived from a much larger reservoir “tank” than the two KL3 and KL4 zones alone.
“The possibility that we have encountered a single 600-700 feet thick, naturally fractured oil reservoir section, encompassing all four Kimmeridge Limestones and underlying a significant proportion of the wider Weald Basin, will now be rigorously examined during the flow testing programme.”
The core taken to date in the Upper Kimmeridge Shales and Limestones is now under extensive geological, petrophysical and geo-mechanical analysis by COREX in Aberdeen and Premier Oilfield Laboratories in Houston, Texas, and Bartlesville, Oklahoma, USA.
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