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Uganda: Tullow Strikes Oil Deposits in Buliisa
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The Monitor (Kampala)
7 August 2008
Posted to the web 7 August 2008
Elias Biryabarema
Kampala
Uganda's petroleum potential continued to expand remarkably, with Tullow Oil, the UK Company that has carried out the most extensive exploration alongside Heritage, announcing it has struck vast deposits in Kasamene-I well in Butiaba area, Buliisa district.
The well is located in exploration Block II--jointly owned with Heritage Oil Corp-- that lies in the Victoria Nile river delta. A statement by Tullow said their drilling, to a total well depth of 957 metres, had encountered a 31-meter hydrocarbon reservoir and 6 meters of dry gas.
Petroleum production and exploration department commissioner, Mr Reuben Kashambuzi described the discovery to Daily Monitor as the best to date. "To encounter such a thick and rich structure with clear separation of oil, gas and water......this is stuff of textbooks, an absolutely wonderful discovery," he said.
According to Tullow, the "reservoir quality for both zones (oil & gas) is excellent," and said the gas and oil columns could be much larger, probably over 35 meters and 75 meters respectively.
Kasamene-1 was drilled 15km to the north-west of the Ngege-1 discovery and is the second successful test, after Ngege I, in the Victoria Nile delta in the Lake Albert Rift Basin.
The well's "excellent quality," the company said, critically diminishes the risk in several adjacent prospects in Blocks 1 and 2 that will be drilled as part of the current 9-well Butiaba region drilling campaign. On completion of operations at Kasamene-1, the rig will move 10 kilometres to the East and drill the Kigogole-1 prospect starting in mid August, the statement said.
"Kasamene-1 is the most important result to date in Tullow's Butiaba drilling campaign," said Tallow's Chief Executive, Aidan Heavey. "In addition to maintaining our 100% exploration success record in Uganda, this result indicates the potential for further significant discoveries from the Victoria Nile delta play."
The rapid succession of petroleum discoveries lately, he said, were anchoring their confidence of quickly achieving the size of reserve volumes required for a large scale commercial production in Uganda.
Spurred by the Tullow's success on Ngege and Kasamene, Heritage is also planning an active drilling campaign in Block 1 scheduled to begin next month on the Buffalo, Giraffe and Warthog prospects.
"The excellent drilling results from the Kasamene-1 well significantly lowers the exploration risk of these and other prospects in Block 1. Kasamene-I is 2.5 Kms from Block 1," Heritage said.
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Heritage claimed that the Buffalo and Giraffe prospects could have up to more than 500 million barrels of oil between them, based on an independent estimate by RPS Energy as at 30, September 2007.
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