PGS revives oil, gas exploration offshore Angola with Lower Congo basin survey reprocessing
(WO) – Following a review of the Lower Congo basin, which high-graded an area of high exploration potential in its 2013 acquisition footprint, PGS and partners ANPG have started reprocessing the 3,684 km2 ANG Block 16 GeoStreamer MC3D survey.
Exploration revival. Exploration in the deepwater Lower Congo basin has been revived over recent years, with numerous significant discoveries made and brought on stream at rapid pace.
A review of past drilling and hydrocarbon-charged reservoirs has yielded the premise that successful recent exploration in the Lower Miocene and Oligocene post-salt plays can be correlated to the evidence of overlooked hydrocarbon shows in the overlying younger stratigraphy.
Several cases exist in neighboring blocks where deeper success lies beneath the presence of shows or discoveries in Upper Miocene reservoirs that were declared non-commercial at the time.
Block 16 overlooked discoveries and deeper potential. Block 16 has largely been overlooked for exploration potential since the early-2010s, with the most recent exploration well drilled in 2013. The Bengo (1994) and Longa (1995) Upper Miocene discoveries in the north of Block 16 were, until recently, the only publicly known oil and gas finds imaged by the ANG Block 16 dataset. The recent re-evaluation of wells in the Lower Congo basin has revealed that oil was also recovered from Upper Miocene reservoirs in the south of the survey area.
Reprocessing will apply more modern depth imaging techniques, akin to those used on the more recent neighboring Block 1/14 GeoStreamer MC3D survey, which demonstrates an improved picture of the deeper post-salt section. The presence of nearby hydrocarbon accumulations in older reservoirs, coupled with the evidence of oil charge to Upper Miocene units, provides great encouragement that the reprocessed ANG Block 16 dataset can lead to further exploration success.
