Exxon Mobil has failed in its effort to find oil offshore Liberia. According to Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited, ExxonMobil’s partner in the Mesurado-1 well, the well is dry.
Drilling started on the Mesurado-1 exploration well on November 21, 2016 utilizing the West Saturn drillship owned by Seadrill.
The Mesurado-1 well is located about 50 miles offshore Liberia on Block LB-13, in approximately 2500 meters of water.
The well, targeting oil in a sequence of Late Cretaceous Santonian aged sands, intersected 145 meters (475 feet) of net sand of which 118 meters (387 feet) was deemed to be reservoir quality. No hydrocarbons were indicated by the logging while drilling operations performed across the targeted intervals.
Exxon Mobil will not be conducting any further logging operations and the well will be plugged and abandoned.
“ We are naturally disappointed by the lack of hydrocarbons in the targeted reservoir sands in the Mersurado-1 well,” said Arthur Millholland CEO of COPL, which holds a 17 percent in the project. “The targeted Santonian sand sequence and thickness intersected was in accordance with our seismic interpretation.”
“The lack of hydrocarbons at this location where our seismic data presented attributes indicative of hydrocarbons will cause us to do additional work on the 3D seismic over the Block, and reevaluate the other leads we have mapped on LB-13.”
Millholland then turned to the company’s assets in Nigeria. He said: “The company holds an attractive oil appraisal and development project offshore Nigeria on OPL 226. Appriasal drilling operations are planned to commence in late 2017. These operations will continue to add value to the company.”