Argos Resources - Eine weitere Chance in Falkland

Argos entered the second phase of its exploration licence in November 2008. This second of three exploration phases continues to November 24th, 2015. Upon entering the second phase of the licence the Company was required to relinquish 30% of the original licence area. The retained licence area in PL001 covers around 1,126 km2, equivalent to approximately 4 North Sea blocks.

The water depth over the licence is between 200m and 500m and therefore not regarded as deep water.

In the first phase of the licence, the Amerada Hess consortium acquired 1416km of proprietary 2D seismic data and drilled two wells which were completed at the end of 1998. Whilst both wells had oil shows, neither were regarded as being commercial and were accordingly plugged and abandoned. There was, however, encouragement that a very high quality oil source rock had been encountered and that the oil generation process had commenced.

Following the completion of the drilling of its two wells and the completion of four additional exploration wells in the North Falkland Basin drilled by others, the Company undertook a thorough review of the data available. This post-drilling analysis led to a new geological model for the North Falkland Basin and indicated that significant oil potential remained untested in the Basin.

Seismic reprocessing and reinterpretation undertaken in 2009 and 2010 has resulted in the identification of seven prospects and five leads which would merit a further 3D seismic programme and further drilling if the 3D seismic results provided confirmation of the prospectivity.

The North Falkland Basin is a relatively underexplored area. The first seven exploration licences were awarded in 1996 with six wells drilled in the first drilling campaign in 1998. Four of these wells were drilled on valid structural features and demonstrated the presence of an active hydrocarbon system. Of the other two wells, one was drilled on a weak structure and the other did not reach the main objective.

Summary of 1998 drilling programme

Well Operator Total Depth Trap Reservoir Comment
14/5-1a Royal Dutch Shell 4,525m Structural - valid Post & Syn-Rift Gas Discovery (Johnson – 32% gas at surface)

14/9-1 Amerada 2,590m Structural - valid Post & Early Syn-Rift Oil Shows

14/9-2 Amerada 2,370m Structural - uncertain closure Post & Early Syn-Rift Oil Shows

14/10-1 Royal Dutch Shell 3,005m Structural - valid Post & Syn-Rift 27° live oil recovered to surface

14/13-1 Lasmo 1,550m Structural - valid Did not reach target Dry

14/24-1 Lundin/IPC 2,939m Structural - invalid Post-Rift Oil 7 Gas Shows

A new drilling programme is underway following the contracting of the Ocean Guardian semi-submersible rig by Desire in September 2009 for a minimum of 8 firm contracted wells in the North Falkland Basin. The first two wells have since been drilled by Desire and Rockhopper which has resulted in the significant Sea Lion oil discovery, announced by Rockhopper in May 2010. The well discovered 53 m of net oil pay in multiple zones of good sands. It is believed that there are good predictive hydrocarbon indicators in the 3D seismic data over Sea Lion. This success has transformed opinion on the attractiveness of the region.

www.argosresources.com/otherLinks.asp

www.upstreamonline.com/incoming/article229264.ece

“Argos is at a less developed stage than the other four but operates in the right postcode and appears a low-cost entry route into the prospective northern part of the North Falkland Basin,” the broker added.

proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/...can-aura-21043.html


www.argosresources.com/docs/AIM-Admission-Document.pdf

Umfangreich aber ein Exkurs über Argos Resources und die unterschiedlichen Bohrziele sowie deren geologische Struktur. Gleichzeitig erhält man eine Eindruck mit unterschiedlichen Wahrscheinlichkeiten was dort erwartet wird.

www.bgs.ac.uk/falklands-oil/prospects/tr_a.htm

noch relativ günstig

hohes Potential

steigt automatisch, wenn Desire bei den nächsten Bohrungen erfolgreich ist

Bohrung liegt ganz in der Nähe von Sea Lion

aufgrund der Bohrungen von den anderen Explorern kann diese Wissen bei den Bohrungen mit einfließen

Bohrungen liegen bei 200 bis 500 m, keine Tiefseebohrung

Argos hat 100% an der Lizenz, später muss nicht geteilt werden

Timetable

Q4 2010 / 2011 Acquire up to 1,000 km2 3D seismic
Q1 2011 Process and interpret 3D seismic data
Q3 2011 Report on prospect inventory
Q4 2011 Submit environmental impact statement
Q4 2011 / 2012 Drilling campaign

www.argosresources.com/operations.asp

www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/...-sea-lion-21265.html


Falklands Explorer Argos is Hunting for Another Sea Lion
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 by Ian Lyall
company news image

Believe it or not, there are certain benefits to coming last. In the case of Argos Resources (LON:ARG), they are very tangible, as it bids to prove up some potentially major reserves in the North Falkland Basin.

It is following in the wake of Desire Petroleum (LON:DES) and Rockhopper Exploration (LON:RKH), which caused a stir earlier this year with the discovery of the Sea Lion field, which could turn out to be a world class find.

Argos will take two dimensional seismic surveys shot in the 1990s and replace and reinterpret them using state-of-the-art 3D analysis.
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This is exactly what Rockhopper did with such spectacular effect when it found Sea Lion. So Argos is happy to do the 3D seismic works.

It also has the comfort of knowing there is oil and gas in the vicinity thanks to the drilling programme of the pioneering Falklands pair.

In effect the more work its rivals do, the more they de-risk Argos's licence area, says managing director John Hogan.

“Thanks to Rockhopper and Sea Lion we now know that we’re in a proven working hydrocarbon province. There is potentially big oil here,” he told Proactive Investors.

“Rockhopper reported a 240million barrels discovery, and Sea Lion could be as big as 670 million. That’s a world class oil field.

“We are in a privileged position we think, that by coming behind everybody else, Rockhopper and Desire are de-risking the proposition for us.

“They’ve both shot 3D seismic data and have demonstrated that 3D data improves data quality, allows you to map with more confidence, and  Rockhopper have found oil based on their 3D data  so we are just following them.

“And between Rockhopper and Desire they are drilling up to eight exploration wells.”

Five of them are in a semi-circle around the Argos licence, Hogan reveals.

And by the time the company has shot and interpreted its 3D data, Rockhopper and Desire’s drilling campaign will have ended.

“That puts us in a great position to high-grade our own prospects and decide where we want to drill first,” Hogan adds.

Last year the company re-processed 2D seismic data acquired as part of a 1998 drilling campaign and identified seven prospects and five leads.

They have a reserve potential of 747 million barrels with an “upside case” of 1.75 billion barrels.

Possibly the most exciting prospect on the licence area is Boreas, which Hogan thinks could be a “mirror image of Sea Lion”.

“We think Boreas is sitting on the western dip slope of the basin, where Sea Lion sits on the eastern dip slope," he explains. “But we’re really pushing the seismic to its limits to handle that, which is why we need 3D.”

The area already contains a significant gas find in the Johnson field, which straddles the Rockhopper and Argos licence areas.

It was discovered in 1998 by Shell and was abandonded because no-one was interested in gas in remote areas at a time of historically low oil prices. The most recent analysis suggests there could be as much as 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Johnson in the upside case.

The oil major’s campaign in the North Falkland Basin also uncovered the presence of a rich source rock for oil, which makes it all the more incredible it turned its back on the area.

“It is over 1000 metres thick in places,” Hogan says. “It’s described by Shell as one of the richest source rocks for oil they’ve ever examined and the second richest in the world.

“It’s got twice the organic carbon content of the organic rich shales in the North Sea which produced all of the North Sea oil.

“And the work that we did, Shell did and the British Geological survey did indicated that at depth this source rock was mature for oil generation and that over 70billion barrels of oil had been generated in the basin.

“And of course the Sea L ion discovery is the first discovery now sourced by this mature source rock.

“And what happened in 1998 was that all the wells except the Shell well which made the gas discovery tested only shallow prospects. No one drilled deep in the basin. No one tested valid deep prospects.

“We now know we’ve got a rich oil source rock and no one had drilled prospects in situations where this source rock could have charged deep prospects.

“And with that lesson that’s been the objective of the 2010 drilling campaign.”

The Argos group, which was incorporated in the Falklands in 1995, owns 100 per cent of the PL001 licence in the Northern Basin.

However it waited until July this year to list on the stock exchange. It raised £22 million from a placing of shares – enough cash to finance the 3D seismic programme.

“The plan is to start the seismic acquisition later this year, in the last quarter, probably in November or December,” Hogan reveals.

“And that’s about a 30 – 60 day programme for us. We then go ahead and process it and go into interpretation. As parts of the data became available we will start the processing and interpretation so we will build up an early picture of the geology and prospects, even as the seismic data is being acquired.

“That would get us to the point in quarter three next year where we have a high-graded prospect inventory.

“By then we would also have completed the exploration well designs and environmental impact statements in readiness for drilling.

“So we would be ready to have a drilling campaign starting at the end of 2011 and into 2012. That is our forward plan for this.”

There are advantages to being a Falklands based company, not least the tax regime: the production royalty is only 9 per cent, while corporation tax is a competitive 26 per cent.

“So in terms of net back value to the operator this is top quartile in worldwide return,” Hogan explains.

“My rule of thumb is, one Falklands barrel is worth two North Sea barrels, and one Falklands barrel is worth three Norwegian North Sea barrels.

“The rate of tax in Norway is 78 per cent.  So when you find barrels of oil in the Falklands, these are very valuable barrels to have.”

Durch die Mitteilung von Rockhopper ist zum einen Desire Petroleum, die gerade bohren als auch die anderen Oilies ganz schön in Mitleidenschaft gezogen worden. Der Dominoeffekt ist gerade ein Paradebeispiel wie stark die Panik und Emotionen der Shareholder in den Ölaktien ihren Ausdruck finden. Insbesondere bei diesen stark emotionsbeladenen Aktien spiegeln die Kurse ganz stark den psychischen Zustand wieder.

Ohne erkennbaren Grund, lediglich die Resourcen bei Rockhopper sind geringer als angenommen, brechen die Kurse ein. Mit Charttechnik komme ich hier nicht mehr weiter.

Derzeit ideale Einstiegskurse für diejenigen, die sich hier noch positionieren wollen.