Some of the drilling equipment for the gas and oil exploration on Pate
Island on April 22, 2018. Drilling for the oil and gas deposits has
finally started. PHOTO | KALUME KAZUNGU | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The first phase of oil and gas exploration in Lamu’s Pate Island has kicked off.
The Sh2.5 billion project is being undertaken by Zarara Oil and Gas Limited, a subsidiary of Midway Resources International.
The company Friday announced commencement of the drilling of the Pate 2 well.
The
drilling is being done on blocks L4 and L13 which are located near the
Sh2.5 trillion Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (Lapsset)
Corridor project, currently being undertaken by the Kenyan government.
The
oil and gas drilling in Pate Island was scheduled to begin in June 2017
but it was delayed due to technical and financial issues.
DRILLING RIG
Speaking to the Nation
on Friday, Zarara Country Manager Peter Nduru said the company has
already contracted a top-hole drilling rig from Drilling Spares &
Services Limited, an experienced Kenyan drilling company, to drill and
run a 20-inch casing for both Pate-2 and Pate-3 wells to 300 meters.
He
said the rig which is being used for the drilling was brought from
Nairobi, having previously set conductor pipe and drilled a number of
top holes for Tullow Oil in the Lokichar valley.
The civil engineering works on Pate Island in preparation for the ongoing drilling campaign were completed in December 2017.
They
included the preparation of a temporary jetty near Mtangawanda on Pate
Island, repair of local access roads, clearing the well site,
construction of reinforced concrete bases for the drill rig and setting
of a 30-inch conductor pipe for the two wells.
Mr
Nduru said Zarara has also contracted the Sakson Rig SK604, a 2,600HP
rig owned by Sakson Drilling and Oil Services for the work.
The rig is currently being transported from Algeria to Mombasa and then to Pate Island.
The rig will complete the drilling on each well to a target depth of 4.5 kilometres.
PHASE ONE
“We
have begun the first phase of oil and gas drilling campaign today at
the Pate 2 Well. All the necessary equipment for the drilling campaign
is in place. We have started with Pate 2 Well before moving to the
second well – Pate 3,” said Mr Nduru.
The drilling comes some 48 years after Shell-BP drilled Pate-1, a natural gas discovery well in 1970.
But
the well was plugged and abandoned due to downhole gas control issues
and the fact that there was no market for natural gas in the region at
that time.
The current drilling
campaign follows a four-year evaluation programme undertaken by Zarara
which included acquisition, processing and interpretation of extensive
block-wide gravity-magnetics data, the acquisition, processing and
interpretation of 400-kilometre line of transition zone 2D seismic over
the original Pate-1 discovery area, and integration of the new data and
analyses with the available historical regional exploration, seismic and
drilling data.
The initial well in
the current campaign, Pate-2, has been stepped out some 300m from the
Pate-1 well and is targeting two hydrocarbon horizons and a final depth
of 4.5 kilometres.
SUPERVISION
The work is being supervised by drilling specialists Norwell Engineering under Zarara’s management.
Each well is expected to take 100 days to drill, test and complete for production.
Mr Nduru said regular progress reports will be released.
On
his side, Zarara’s Nairobi-based Chief Operating Officer Austen Titford
explained that following a successful confirmation of the original
Pate-1 gas discovery with Pate-2 well, a second well Pate-3 will be
drilled directionally from the same well-site.
The
second well is designed to confirm the resources necessary for phase
one of Zarara’s gas monetisation strategy involving generating
electricity and/or micro-scale liquefied natural gas.
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