Cairn said on April 11 that it will drill a fourth well offshore Senegal after having exploration and appraisal success with its latest evaluation program.

While targeting the Bellatrix exploration prospect and appraising the northern extent of the SNE field discovered in 2014, the BEL-1 well encountered two good quality gas-bearing sand reservoirs of a combined net thickness of 8 m between the Bellatrix main objective and deeper SNE appraisal objective, Cairn said in a news release.

The exploration results confirmed the presence of shallower regionally extensive reservoirs also encountered in the SNE-3 well more than 9 km away. These well results, along with the latest 3-D seismic acquired in fourth-quarter 2015, will be incorporated into block-wide remapping to look at possible new plays and down-dip oil potentially associated with the shallower reservoirs, according to the release.

Cairn said the joint venture has agreed to drill a fourth well, SNE-4, 5 km southeast of the SNE-1 discovery well due to the success of the ongoing appraisal program. Utilizing Ocean Rig Athena, the well will appraise the eastern extent of the field and aim to confirm the nature of the upper reservoirs in the oil zone.

Offshore