Eco bullish on Orinduik Block and Total farm-in

Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 June 2018, 19:57 by Denis Chabrol

Gil Holzman, President & Chief Executive Officer of Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas says the oil explorer is excited at the prospects of its Guyana offshore block based on recent seismic data and is confident French conglomerate Total will exercise an option to farm in to the concession.

In January 2016, Eco Atlantic signed a Petroleum Agreement and is party to an Offshore Petroleum Licence with the Government of Guyana and Tullow Oil for the 1800 km² Orinduik Block offshore Guyana. Eco has a 40% working interest and Tullow has a 60% working interest in the block.

In an interview with Justin Waite of The Vox Markets Podcast, Holzman said Eco was encouraged by yet another discovery by Exxon in its neighboring Stabroek Block bringing reserves over 3.2B barrels. “They are getting closer and closer to our block… a few kilometres away …we are up dip, they are down dip, same formation, same kind of a play….same kind of channel, slope that we are looking at. So every Exxon discovery in Guyana means a great deal to us, especially to us, as we are so close to the block.”

As for its own plans Holzman said “based on the 2D we managed to interpret over 1bn barrels worth of leads” and he said that number has the potential to go higher. Holzman said the Exxon discoveries had spurred Eco together Tullow to enhance its programme. The partners have just completed a very large 3d seismic survey last September and are nearing completion of its interpretation: “The last last pieces are being delivered to us…I can only tell you our team is very encouraged, the Tullow team is very encouraged with what we see there. We will probably be in a position to finalise in the next two to four weeks…The last batches of data are being sent to Total our option farm in partner. We are in a very good position to publish a volumetric CPR based on the 3D that we have… by the end of July and deliver last batches of data to Total and contractually to start the 120-day clock ticking for Total to exercise the farm-in option….Total is already getting and interpreting data…In reality they are already very much in the process of interpreting with us and Tullow the 3D results and I have a good reason to believe they really like what they see….They have a pretty good idea what we have there.”

Holzman went on,  “The next thing to do is basically to take the drilling decision… For that we already agreed a few days ago with Tullow… to start the drilling engineering process. It was only expected to begin in November but we decided to start immediately …We already applied for an environmental clearance for drilling from the government of Guyana.

He predicts that soon “the three partners will be drill ready and it’s only then a matter of lead time for engineering of wells and to identify the exact few targets we see on the 3D and to prioritize what is the chance of success on each target and to go ahead and drill a few wells…”