Pancontinental is engaging the services of a specialist in-country consultant to assist with an environmental impact assessment as a precursor to seeking approval to conduct exploration drilling operations within PEL 87 in the Orange Basin.
The participants in the PEL 87 Joint Venture are Pancontinetal’s subsidiary, Pancontinental Orange (75), Custos Investments (15%), and Namcor (10%).
The company has also initiated a farmout process to secure a joint venture partner to fund exploration drilling within PEL 87 at the earliest opportunity.
It is engaging only with companies with deepwater operational capability and a commensurate balance sheet.
So far, Pancontinetal says it is encouraged by the strong level of interest from a combination of supermajors, large independents, and national oil companies.
Pancontinental continued various technical studies during the quarter, which ended March 31, 2925, leading to the estimation of Prospective Resources for the Saturn Complex prospect/lead inventory.
The Saturn Complex is interpreted to host two main prospects and six additional leads.
The Oryx prospect is the older of the identified basin floor fans within the PEL 87 Saturn Complex and exhibits an apparent Type II AVO amplitude anomaly.
It also shows the largest connected sand body at up to 144 km2 of the prospect’s total area of over 500 km2. The Albian-aged turbidite sands are interpreted to have been reworked during and post-deposition by blue water currents with associated winnowing expected to wash out finer-grained sediments, potentially creating an extensive and high-quality reservoir system.
The central area is draped over a structural high that contains other overlying AVO anomalies attributed to the Calypso and Addax leads.
The Hyrax Prospect is located in the southern portion of the Saturn Complex and exhibits Type II AVO amplitude anomalies over a combined 400 km2 area.
The Hyrax Albian reservoir target is slightly younger than at Oryx, and the turbiditic sands are dominated by elongate stacked geometries, believed to result from the redistribution of coarse clastic by winnowing from blue water currents.
Two subsurface technical studies remain in progress, with basin modelling and seismic inversion projects nearing completion.
Pancontinental is encouraged that the basin modelling study indicates a Kudu oil source kitchen immediately beneath and to the northeast of the Saturn Complex. Based on regional well data, the Kudu Shale is interpreted to be up to 300 metres thick and within the oil maturity window.
The fetch area that feeds into the Saturn Complex is predicted to have generated and expelled some 20 billion barrels of oil, and charge access is regarded as excellent, with oil migration from the kitchen into the Saturn Complex required only over a relatively short distance and minimal vertical migration needed to charge the overlaying Saturn Complex targets.
Another positive finding of the basin modelling study is that the Gas-Oil-Ratio (GOR) is expected to be substantially lower than encountered at the TotalEnergies and Shell discoveries to the south.
The proximal Kudu kitchen is buried deep above the main gas-generative window.
However, some gas is expected due to the dominant Type II marine nature of the Kudu Shale.
