Monday 19 December 2016

ExxonMobil has failed to make a find at a highly-anticipated and much-delayed deep-water exploration well off Liberia.

The US supermajor reached total depth at the Mesurado-1 well on Block LB-13 on 17 December but, despite intersecting reservoir quality sands, failed to register any hydrocarbons.

The well, situated in 2500 metres of water, is now to be plugged and abandoned with no further logging operations, block partner Canadian Overseas Petroleum said on Monday.

The well, which was spud with the Seadrill-owned drillship West Saturn on 21 November, was targeting oil in Late Cretaceous Santonian-aged sands. It intersected 145 metres of net sand, of which 118 metres was deeled to be of reservoir quality. However, no hydrocarbons were found.

Canadian Overseas chief executive Arthur Milholland said: "We are naturally disappointed by the lack of hydrocarbons in the targeted reservoir sands in the Mersurado-1 well.

"The targeted Santonian sand sequence and thickness intersected was in accordance with our seismic interpretation.

"The lack of hydrocarbons at this location where our seismic data presented attributes indicative of hydrocarbons will cause us to do additional work on the 3D seismic over the block, and re-evaluate the other leads we have mapped on LB-13."

ExxonMobil operates the block on 83% with Canadian Overseas on the remaining 17%. The latter's shares were hammered in London following the news of the duster, slumping a massive 80% before 9am on Monday. The US supermajor was, however, carrying its partner for drilling at the well.

The outbreak of Ebola in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone more than two years ago forced ExxonMobil to delay drilling of the Mesurado-1 well in July 2014. This was mainly due to the lack of expatriate workers in the region following the outbreak.