Cairn/FAR return to deepwater FAN in Senegal
The next well to be drilled by the Cairn/FAR joint venture offshore Senegal will be the FAN South-1 exploration well, marking a shift away from the shelf and back into the basin where the first exploration well, FAN-1, was drilled in 2014.
Source: FAR Ltd
FAN-1 was a discovery that, crucially, established the presence of world class source rocks in the region. It encountered a hydrocarbon interval of over 500m, but the reservoir quality was not as promising as seen in subsequent shelf well SNE-1 and so Cairn focused on the appraisal of SNE while developing geological models to identify areas of improved reservoir thickness and quality either in FAN or in another fan along the trend.
Source: FAR Ltd
Based on this modelling work, FAN South-2 will be positioned slightly shallower in the basin than FAN-1, where Cairn believes it should be able to encounter much better developed reservoir characteristics. FAN South-2 is a new fan on trend with the North Fan and with a separate input point and new layers. The well will be located around 20km south east of SNE-3 in 2,139m of water (compared to 1,100m in SNE) and is targeting a Cretaceous channelized turbidite fan with multiple stacked layers.
Source: Cairn Energy
Cairn estimates that FAN-2 contains mean prospective resources of over 100mmbbls with a consolidated GCoS of 24% (note: as the GCoS is consolidated it cannot be applied to the 100mmbbls). FAR assigns 134mmbbls with a GCoS of 18%. FAR did not respond to our query as to why a sub-20% GCoS well has been selected when other options are available on the shelf.
Beyond this well, the JV has five remaining exercisable options on the rig and has stated it is keen to explore the whole of the licence. However we only have sight of one further exploration well, SNE North (previously Sirius), a shelf prospect with mean prospective resources of over 80mmbbls across stacked targets.
