Business
Acquisition of new acreage in Kurdistan Region
Acquisition of new acreage in Kurdistan Region.
About this update from Genel Energy Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \nRNS Number : 2509D Genel Energy PLC 14 May 2012 \n \n\nGenel Energy plc\n14th May 2012\nGENEL ACQUIRES SIGNIFICANT NEW ACREAGE IN THE KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ\nIn a step that further builds its resource base in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Genel Energy plc (\"Genel Energy\" or \"Genel\") today announced it is to acquire a 23 per cent stake in the Bina Bawi exploration licence. The Bina Bawi licence lies alongside the producing Taq Taq oilfield where current potential output is some 80,000 barrels a day and is projected to rise to some 200,000 barrels a day. \n \nBina Bawi licence covers an area of 246 square kilometres to the east of Erbil. Genel said two of the three wells drilled on the block to date had encountered significant hydrocarbons.\n \nThe acquisition will be made through the purchase for $175 million of all of the share capital of A&T Petroleum Company Ltd, current holders of the stake. A&T is wholly owned by Petoil Petroleum and Petroleum Products International Exploration and Production Inc. The deal will be financed from Genel's existing cash resources. \n \nGenel CEO Tony Hayward said: \"What we are acquiring is very high-quality acreage in an area immediately adjacent to Taq Taq, one of our major established fields which we plan in due course to link by a pipe line to the region's main export pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan.\n\"The transaction fits neatly with our strategy of building our Kurdistan resource base through the steady, considered addition of promising acreage.\"\nGenel said the first well drilled on the block in 2007 on a large surface anticline Bina Bawi-1, had encountered significant shows of 35-degree API oil while drilling through the Cretaceous zone and tested 6 million standard cubic feet of gas a day in the Triassic zone. \nThe third well, Bina Bawi-3, completed recently by block operator OMV on the same structure, had encountered a gross hydrocarbon column of more than 800 metres in the Jurassic zone. Two Jurassic reservoir intervals tested separately had achieved an aggregate flow rate of more than 4,000 barrels a day of light, 44 to 47-degree API oil. \nGenel said a further gross hydrocarbon column, estimated at over 1,000 metres, in the Triassic zone of Bina Bawi-3, remained untested but had confirmed the gas find made in the first well in 2007. \n...