Anadarko has made a further significant deepwater find in the US Gulf of Mexico – its third this year to date.
The Green Canyon Block 432 Samurai discovery well was drilled some 20km (12 miles) north of the Marco Polo platform and encountered more than 36.5m (120ft) of net oil pay in several high-quality sands.
“Samurai marks our third discovery in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico this year,” said Bob Daniels, Anadarko senior VP for worldwide exploration.
“We are very pleased with the results of this initial well, which is located in close proximity to existing infrastructure, demonstrating the value of our hub-and-spoke approach.
“We look forward to drilling a sidetrack appraisal well within the next year.
“The continued success of our worldwide exploration programme reinforces our expectations of discovering approximately 350million barrels oil equivalent of net resources in 2009, which is a 50% increase from the expectations we communicated at our investor conference in March of this year.”
Samurai was drilled using the Belford Dolphin drillship. The well is located in about 1,036m (3,400ft) of water and was drilled to a total depth of 9,662m (31,700ft).
Anadarko is also currently drilling the Vito prospect on Mississippi Canyon block 984 and expects to have results in the coming weeks.
However, the company said its efforts on the GoM Turtle Lake Lower-Tertiary prospect and Gouda pre-salt prospect offshore Brazil (block BM-ES-24) were unsuccessful.
Late-June saw Anadarko mobilising the Belford Dolphin to West Africa to start drilling on the company’s Venus prospect offshore Sierra Leone (block SL-6/07).
This will be followed by another exploration well on the South Grand Lahou prospect offshore Cote d’Ivoire, on block 105.
Both prospects are said to have seismic signatures and characteristics similar to the world-class Jubilee field offshore Ghana, which is now under development. Following these drilling activities, Anadarko plans to move the drillship to begin the company’s multi-well deepwater drilling programme offshore Mozambique.