Sonangol and Angola’s oil and gas regulator, the National Agency for Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (ANPG), have wrapped up drilling and testing on the Katambi-2 appraisal well in Block 24 of the Benguela Basin — and the results are striking. The Seadrill-operated drillship West Gemini, deployed through the Sonadrill joint venture, drilled the well roughly 1.3 kilometres from the original Katambi-1, which BP drilled back in 2014 and 2015 before walking away from the discovery as commercially unviable.
This time the numbers tell a different story. Katambi-2 crossed two productive zones spanning about 331 metres in total thickness, with porosity between 9% and 12% and permeability higher than what BP recorded at the original site. Initial tests logged a stabilised flow of 41 million cubic feet of gas per day plus 1,160 barrels of condensate daily, with no water or hydrogen sulfide detected.
ANPG has called it the first complete drill stem test ever carried out on a non-associated gas reservoir in Angola, with early indications suggesting the well could ultimately produce more than 100 million cubic feet of gas a day. Sonangol now plans to drill a further appraisal well before settling on a development plan for the block.
Source: drillingcontractor.org
