Oil exploration: Panoro Energy announces new discovery in Gabon

The independent Norwegian oil Exploration and Production (E&P) company Panoro Energy ASA has made a new oil discovery further to the drilling of  the Hibiscus Updip well on the Dussafu Marin Permit, offshore Gabon, the company announced on Friday 30^th August in a press release.

Panoro Energy “is pleased to announce that the Hibiscus Updip well (“DHIBM-1”), currently being drilled on the Dussafu Marin Permit (“Dussafu”) offshore Gabon, has encountered hydrocarbons”, the Oslo-based company stated, visibly satisfied and encouraged by these promising results.

Earlier in August, Panoro Energy launched the drilling of an exploration prospect on the Dussafu permit following 3D seismic identification, “targeting the highly productive Gamba reservoir”, as the company reported then.

Panoro Energy Chairman, Julien Balkany was highly optimistic about potential discoveries with the drilling of the Hibiscus Updip Prospect and announced early August, just days before the start of the drilling operations, that “we expect to find a high quantity of producible oil in this higher position. In a nutshell we are excited by this new exploration well”.

As expected, the exploration prospect proved to be successful and Panoro’s team along its operating partner BW energy has swiftly discovered hydrocarbons. “Logging operations and evaluation of the oil discovery are currently underway, following which Panoro expects a side-track of DHIBM-1 to be drilled”, the company reiterated in its last press release.

Panoro Energy acquired some new 3D seismic that helped better identified and further defined the Hibiscus Updip in 2013. Hibiscus well was first drilled, unsuccessfully, by the American company Arco in 1991, before 3D imagery was available. The current offshore exploration well is being drilled at a depth of approximately 3,000 meters by Borr Drilling, a leading offshore oil and gas drilling Norwegian contractor that already worked for BW energy and Panoro Energy on its successful drilling campaign on the Dussafu permit last year.

The Hibiscus Updip prospect is the first of five n wells that Panoro intends to drill in Gabon in the coming months in order to “double production at the Tortue field” as well as very likely another exploration well to proof up more reserves and unlock the huge potential of Dussafu.