LONDON (Alliance News) - Roxi Petroleum PLC said Monday that work to clean up its Deep Well A5 in the west of Kazakhstan is continuing as planned, and it continues to expect the well to be clear and testing to have started by the end of March.
The well is in the BNG contract area, in which Roxi has a 58.41% interest. The contract area is located 40 kilometres south east of Tengiz on the edge of the Mangistau Oblast.
The Deep Well A5 remains blocked by a drill bit that was dropped during the clean up operation, Roxi said, and it is continuing work to remove this drill bit to allow for testing.
Deep Well 801, which is located around 8 kilometres from Deep Well A5, has been drilled to a total depth of 3,560 meters without incident. Drilling has now been paused to allow the casing to be set, at which point drilling will begin through "more difficult intervals", including a salt layer of around 300 meters, and an 800 meter section with high pressure.
It will be drilled to a total depth of 4,950 meters, which Roxi expects to be completed by mid-April.
The company has continued testing at Well 143, and said that following extended swabbing operations oil with only minimal water content has been produced under nature flow at a rate of 70 barrels of oil per day.
"Operationally things are going well. The work to clean up Deep Well A5 continues as planned and to date drilling Deep Well 801 has been a far smoother experience than our first deep well A5. We are also particularly pleased that our extended swabbing activities at Well 143 have been rewarded with what appears to be commercial rates of production of naturally flowing oil," said Chairman Clive Carver in a statement.
Shares in Roxi are trading down 1.2% at 12.10 pence Monday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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