Independent Oil and Gas (IOG) expects to start drilling the Skipper appraisal well, in the UK North Sea, on July 22, 2016 with Transocean’s 1974-built Sedco 704 semi-submersible rig.
The rig is expected to come on contract on or around July 20, 2016.
Skipper lies in Block 9/21a in licence P1609 in the Northern North Sea and IOG is the 100% owner. The appraisal well is expected to take approximately 22 days to drill.
The company said that the vertical well will be drilled to 5,600ft with the primary objective of retrieving good quality reservoir condition oil samples in order to optimise the Skipper field development plan.
The well will also drill two mapped reservoir structures beneath the Skipper oil field in the Lower Dornoch and Maureen formations.
The company noted it believes an approved field development plan on Skipper would convert the board’s estimated 34.1 MMBbls of contingent resources, based on a 25% recovery factor, into 2P reserves.
Initial results from the well are expected mid-August, said IOG.
Mark Routh CEO of IOG commented: “We continue to make good progress towards the drilling of the Skipper appraisal well, which has received tremendous support from the North Sea community. We believe this well will be transformational for the Company and look forward to its imminent spudding.”
As IOG announced in June, part of the advance payment of $1,728,000 to the rig owner Transocean was satisfied by the issue of 2.7 million ordinary shares in the capital of the company at 18.375p.
The company has elected to issue a further 6,350,000 ordinary shares at 15.375p per IOG share to Transocean, to satisfy the balance of the required advance payment and estimated costs associated with the rig’s demobilization.
Furthermore, 75,000 ordinary shares have been issued at a price of 1p per option share to another contractor pursuant to the exercise of options granted in consideration for services provided prior to admission of the company’s ordinary shares to trading on AIM in 2013.