Our neighbour ca. 100/200 km to the East – ReconAfrica – will imminently spud its debut wildcat onshore Namibia according to the company’s announcement from June 22, 2022. They are targeting a prospect that could hold 800 million barrels of oil in place and what is the first of a four-well exploration campaign in this frontier region. ReconAfrica has acquired a significant quantity of 2D seismic data in the past two years and has also drilled a couple of stratigraphic wells.
The well 8-2 is to be drilled to a planned depth of 2800 metres and is designed to test potential conventional oil and natural gas reservoirs in sandstone, part of the company’s primary Karoo Rift Fill play.
The well will also be drilled deeper into the Pre-Karoo Mulden and Otavi formations, the same intervals in which ReconAfrica’s 6-2 stratigraphic well — located 6.5 kilometres to the east — intercepted oil and gas shows.
It is our strong belief that the oil and gas shows seen in the 6-2 well were sourced from the Pre-Karoo Owambo Basin rather than the <1500m deep Karoo Rift as mapped and presented by Recon. This does not fundamentally change the prospectivity of Recon’s Karoo Rift as it is clear that hydrocarbons have migrated into the Rift from the Owambo Basin but the shows seen in the pre-Karro formations, and any future shows and discoveries made by Recon in their upcoming campaign, strongly support the prospectivity of Monitor’s acreage which sits in the heart of the Owambo Basin, directly above the interpreted source kitchen.
The Karoo section is relatively thin in Monitor’s acreage but the Mulden and Otavi targets are very well developed in a series of large compressional anticlines and thrust strucutres.
It is anticipated that Recon’s exploration well will reach its total depth within 60 days of starting.
After this probe has been completed, the rig will drill three back-to-back probes, aiming for seismically defined structures to further test the Karoo Rift Fill play as well as the Intra Rift Fault Block play.
The company’s independent reserves evaluator estimates that 8-2 could hold 799 million barrels of oil in place, about 138 million barrels of which could be recoverable.
Monitor wishes ReconAfrica success in this next significant step.
