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Providence announces completion of offshore well
By Clara Nwachukwu with agency reports
Published: Thursday, 17 Apr 2008

Providence Resources Plc, the Irish oil and gas exploration and development company, has announced the completion of drilling operations on its AJE Field, in Oil Mining Lease 113, offshore Nigeria.

The AJE-4 well, which was drilled in 1,000-feet water depth using the drill-ship Transocean Pathfinder, was designed to evaluate the lateral extent of the oil and gas bearing reservoirs.

The drillship is said to have been chartered by the consortium for a one-well slot at a day rate of $515,000.

The reservoirs had been successfully tested in the AJE-1 & 2 wells were located some two kilometres from the AJE-4 location.

Drilling operations were carried out by Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company Limited, the operator, in conjunction with Chevron Nigeria Deepwater H Limited, as technical adviser.

As forecast, the AJE- 4 well encountered cretaceous aged hydrocarbon bearing sections, specifically a gas condensate and oil bearing turonian reservoir with oil bearing cenomanian intervals.

A comprehensive logging and coring programme has been completed with the down-hole pressure measurements and hydrocarbon sampling.

The AJE-4 well is currently being suspended.

Other partners in the AJE project are PR Oil and Gas Nigeria Limited, Vitol Exploration Nigeria Limited and Energy Equity Resources Aje Limited.

The Chief Executive, Providence Resources, Mr. Tony O’Reilly, said, “Following on from our recently announced success in the US Gulf of Mexico, we are delighted with the results from the AJE-4 appraisal drilling programme.

“The AJE-4 well results are in line with our pre-drill expectations and have confirmed our long held view in relation to the prospectivity of OML113.”

He said the company planned to meet with its to discuss the well results in the context of the commercial potential of the AJE field.

He added, “Should the AJE field progress to development, it will have a significant and material impact on Providence’s proven reserves going forward.”

Providence Resources had earlier expressed delight with the results from the AJE-4 appraisal drilling programme, which it said, was in line with its pre-drill expectations.

It hoped to have front-end engineering and design for the prospect in place by the second quarter of 2009.

You can claim ''first oil'' only when you have the facilities to evacuate ''commercial'' quantities of hydrocarbon to a sales point at the initial stage, and the field is onstream (ramping up production)

All of the information given above did not state that the wells were tested to ''potential'', or that some x barrels/day crude was obtained from the well. Now, while the geological information stated looks promising, it is only at the point where we have hydrocarbon production that we can claim the field is indeed commercial.

I would greatly love to see Lagos join the ranks of oil producers, since this will eventually reduce dependency on niger delta oil and gas resources - too many mouths to feed with meagre resources from Niger Delta crude oil sales.

dividents of the oil exploration has not started and we already see the filthy hands of the "big men" there yinka folawiyo indeed,wonder if lagos will not turn to another no man's land if they find the oil in commercial quantity and is conered by the likes of them folawiyo,okoya and co

ono, it's just a matter of time. The first oil will flow. Agree it will help reduce the amount of hungry mouths ND oil is currently feeding as Nigierias GDP is still heavily oil dependent. But I see this GDP growth coming from the big banks soon as stock broking firms will soon start more venture capitalist funding. More things will soon start being manufatured in Nigeria. All our brothers abroad will see that they are missing out and just as they have rushed to send their funds back home (stock market) they will rush to return home as they will observe that there are now better paying job opportunities in Nigeria.

lucabrasi don't judge too fast. However NEITI (Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative) is there with a view to improving trasnparency. Senat and House of Reps just need to sit up and support good initiatives like this.

we go soon find oil for sokoto