Kurdistan
Location: Kurdistan (northern Iraq)
Area: 492 km2
Sterling Equity: 53.33% (Operator)
Partners: Addax 26.67%, KNOC 20%
The Sangaw North PSC licence block, which covers an area of 492 km2, lies in a highly prospective area around 50 km south east of the giant Kirkuk oil field, on trend with Addax Petroleum’s Taq Taq oil field and the Chemchemal gas condensate discovery and 40 km south of Heritage’s recent Miran West oil discovery.
An independent review of the Sangaw North prospect undertaken by RISC (UK) Ltd estimates the unrisked prospective resources for the Cretaceous reservoir interval (at a depth of 1,700-2,900m) are 804 mmbbl (gross), with a chance of success of 27%. RISC considers that condensate and gas are as likely to be discovered in Sangaw North as oil. Additional potential is also present in the deeper Jurassic and Triassic intervals. Success rates for recent exploration wells drilled in the Kurdistan region are around 50%.
Sangaw North-1, the first exploration well on the Sangaw North block, spudded on 1 February 2010, will target several prospective Cretaceous and Jurassic aged reservoirs. The well, with an initial planned depth of 3,660m, has been designed with the option to drill deeper to a total depth of 4,160m to test additional Jurassic aged reservoirs; the decision to drill this additional section will be taken based upon the drilling results.
Drilling and preliminary evaluation is anticipated to take 180 days.
