MAASTRICHTIAN - SIGNIFICANT? After CGX released news on Monday I have been wrestling with many questions. One of the them is how the recent news (i.e. a water bearing Maastrichtian zone) would impact the deeper Turonian play (Jaguar / Eagle Deep)? Would it kill the deeper Turonian play concept all together?
After doing some reasearch I found that all of the successful wells drilled by Tullow and Kosmos in Ghana had pay only in the Turonian (majority) and Campanian. Hmm...
Also, and more interesting, was the recent discovery by African Petroleum in Liberia - who are also pursuing the "Tullow play" along the trans-atlantic margin (i.e. stratigraphic Turnoian fan along the abrupt margin). I would recommend you go to their website and download there March 2012 presentation - https://www.africanpetroleum.com.au/IRM/content/announce_presentations.html.
On slide 24 - 26 of the African Petroleum presentation it shows the Narina-1 discovery as having encountered thick, high quality reservoir in the Campanian and Santonian. I am assuming since there was no pay - these zones were also water bearing. However, you can see as they drilled deeper the Turonian zone did have 32 meters of oil pay with no oil-water contact.
So, I am hopeful (that with Tullow involved in Jaguar) shareholders stand at a good chance of making a significant discovery - which would be huge! I am hopeful Jaguar will be drilled under budget and before the 180 day outlook.
I would assume Jaguar is probably deeper than Eagle Shallow at the moment...around at 15,000ft or so..leaving around 5,000ft left to drill.
On a seperate issue: I am actually ok with CGX having drilled the Eagle Shallow well which was needed in order to retain the Corentyne Block until mid 2013. To some extent I am also ok (even though dissapointed) with Eagle Shallow being a dry hole. Again, the thoery was CGX will be participating in 2 wells, which it had funds secured to drill both. Most importantly, one of the partners in the well is Tullow... To me, this is all good.
What is hard to swallow, for me, is havng gone 20M over budget drilling Eagle Shallow and now having management propose to raise another 20M via another equity offering, which looks to be anywhere from .30 - .50 per share.