UK-based Cairn Energy said results from its SNE-6 appraisal well in offshore Senegal indicated oil of similar quality to previous wells on the SNE field.

The company intended to flow oil from a key unit in the upper reservoirs in the 400 series and show connectivity existed between SNE-6 and the previously successful SNE-5 well.

The company said rig performance continues to be excellent and operations were completed ahead of schedule and under budget following drilling, logging and drill stem testing (DST).

SNE-6 marks the ninth successful well drilled by the company in Senegal in three years. It is being plugged and abandoned having achieved its mission.

Last month, Cairn Energy announced the completion of drilling of the VR-1 well offshore Senegal which confirmed the presence of high quality oil reservoirs.

Cairn Energy CEO Simon Thomson said: “The results from this latest well together with SNE-5 and VR-1 provide essential data as we move towards submitting a development plan for the SNE field to the Government of Senegal in 2018.

“Operations now move to FAN SOUTH as we continue to test significant further prospectivity in the extensive acreage position.”

A short DST was carried out after it was found that SNE-6 and SNE-5 had good connectivity as per the pressure data recorded from the latest drilled well, said the company.

The upper reservoir is connected with SNE-5 about 1.6km away, as per the pressure data compiled from SNE-6.

Cairn Energy stated that it is integrating the new data and estimating to which extent water flood secondary recovery can be applied to the upper reservoirs.

Analysis of the SNE-E well drilling showed that main reservoir units, fluid contacts and pressure data are similar to what was seen with the previously drilled SNE appraisal wells.

Also, the analysis from various oil samples recovered during the DST indicated oil was of similar quality to what was found in the drilling of the previous wells.

Cairn Energy plans to come up with further analysis after collecting the interference test data from the observation wells, to ascertain the impact on modelled reservoir architecture, recoverable resource base and plan for future development.

Image: Map showing results of Cairns Energy’s drilling in Senegal. Photo: courtesy of Cairn Energy PLC.