regional historic drills Taken from the TRP website,
Namibia project
Previous exploration interest
This area of the Namibian Offshore has been the scene of previous exploration interest back in the early-mid 1990's. Norsk Hydro drilled two wells (1911/15-1 and 1911/10-1) in the area in January 1994 and June 1995 respectively. The wells were drilled following an exploration prospectivity report prepared by Norsk Hydro in late 1990 (the "Norsk Hydro Report"). The report "confirmed extensive rift basins along the Namibian coast indicating good potential for traps and source rocks, and interesting reservoir configurations at different stratigraphic positions in the northern part of offshore Namibia".
Both wells were plugged and abandoned as dry holes having reached total depth in several hundred metres of volcanics thought to be of Aptian or possibly Barremian age. However neither well was drilled through the volcanics to the underlying mid to late Jurassic syn-rift sequence, which shows some clear half-graben structures and significant accommodation space for deposition of sediments. Notwithstanding the lack of success, the presence of three potential source horizons was established and a number of potential good quality reservoir horizons were identified as well as some residual oil saturations.
Neptune Petroleum Limited, in August 2005, licensed three blocks lying over the southern flanks of the Walvis Ridge (see Figure 1). The licence had an initial exploration period of two years, now extended to four years, with a minimum expenditure of $1.15 million. Subsequent Exploration Periods, each of two years duration, initially had a single well commitment.
Neptune, as a first step, completed the interpretation of 10,000 kms of bought seismic data covering the Licence area; undertook a comprehensive geochemical study; and contracted a sea surface oil seep survey. The outcome of these assessments gave considerable encouragement. As a consequence, several seismic lines were reprocessed and reinterpreted using Amplitude Variation Offset (AVO) analysis to improve the assessment of hydrocarbon indications. The AVO work revealed strong indications of light hydrocarbons in the north-western area of the Licence, some coincident with commercial scale structures. Also, importantly, the analysis confirmed that there was no AVO evidence to indicate that oil or gas should have been present at the locations of the two unsuccessful wells drilled by Norsk Hydro in the early-mid 1990s.