Dead Sea Well Approved for Drilling

Shahar prospect gets nod for drilling

The well, due to begin drilling in the second quarter, is targeting oil-bearing strata at a depth of 3,300 meters.

Globes 31 January 11 12:22, Yael Gruntman

The Southern Regional Planning and Building Commission has approved the drilling of the Shahar 1 well, scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2010. The well will drill to deep oil-bearing target strata.

Ginko Oil Exploration LP, which fully owns the license, has two positive opinions about the amount about the amount of oil in the license area: one by Dr. Haim Fliegelman, who estimates 260 million barrels of oil, and a second by UK consultancy firm Simco Petroleum (Management) Ltd., which estimates 9-138 million barrels of oil in the target strata.

At the current price of oil of $90 per barrel, the high-end estimate of 260 million barrels of oil is worth $23.4 billion, and the mid-range estimate of 41 million barrels of oil is worth $3.69 billion. Either way, the field has huge potential.

The Shahar license covers 389,000 dunam (97,250 acres) south of the Arava junction at the southern end of the Dead Sea valley. The Shahar 1 well will drill to 3,300 meters at a cost of $9 million. Lapidoth Israel Oil Prospectors Corporation Ltd. (TASE: LAPD) will probably be the well contractor.

Ginko, which owns the Shahar license, is in the final stages of merging with stock market shell Simcha Urieli & Sons Engineering & Construction Co, Ltd. (TASE: UREL), after Urieli’s shareholders approved the merger agreement last week.

Zion AME Rig Leaves Turkey

The 2,000 horsepower Aladdin Middle East drilling rig contracted by
Zion Oil & Gas to drill the Ma’anit Rehoboth #2 well in northern
Israel was loaded on the the freighter “Umiavut” yesterday at the
Turkish port of Iskenderun.

Moving the rig from Turkey to Israel is no small chore.
Transporting the Zion rig overland requires 80 truckloads of
equipment. That’s 80 trucks loaded in Ankara (inland Turkey) and
transported to the dock at Iskenderun. 80 trucks unloaded and put
aboard ship. 80 trucks unloaded at Haifa, Israel and transported to
Zion’s Ma’anit Rehoboth site. 80 trucks unloaded and set up at the
well site. Whew!

Here’s the estimated time lapse: Transit time via ship from Turkey
to the port of Haifa in Israel is four days. Combined transit and
setup time from the port of Haifa to the well site at Ma’anit is
nine days. Today is April 16. If all goes well, by April 30 (don’t
count Shabbat on the 25th) we may be hearing exciting news from
Israel!

A Dead Sea Oil Discovery in Jordan?

Seems like we can’t get enough Dead Sea oil discovery news lately. Just today The Jordan Times ran an article apparently confirming the existence of a Dead Sea oil discovery on their side of the  salt lake.

According to The Jordan Times:

After years of disappointment, many came to accept that the Kingdom is home to little or no oil reserves.

But with recent claims of the possibility of Jordanian oil, and a parliamentary committee examining the issue, the subject has been elevated to a national discourse steeped in controversy and unanswered questions.

The issue dates back to 1996, when the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) signed a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with US company Trans-Global to explore for oil in the Dead Sea area….

Over the next few years, the firm dug four wells at Isaal and Wadi Mujib, some thousands of metres deep, in hope that the rift valley would yield any positive results.

According to the company, logging data and technical studies of the wells revealed huge oil traps of hydrocarbons with significant commercial potential and large oil pays, the solid technical indicators of a major oil discovery.

On August 15, 2005, as per the PSA, the company said it officially informed the NRA of its discovery, but the authority declined to review the studies, according to Trans-Global, which felt there was little interest on the part of the NRA administration to follow through.

“This is the exact opposite of how any petroleum ministry in the world would respond to the discovery of oil,” Trans-Global General Manager Nazeeh Abraham told The Jordan Times.

“We claimed a significant oil discovery, and instead of developing it they denied it. We then faced obstructions every step on the way, preventing us from starting a large accelerated drilling development programme,” he added.

Frustrated with the lack of interest from the authority, Trans-Global announced the discovery during the 9th International Geological Conference of the Jordanian Geologists Association in Amman in April last year.

The announcement created an uproar and came as a shock to the NRA.

“They went public without ever informing us, which is a breach of the PSA. We were only told of a technical discovery, which doesn’t mean much in the oil business,” NRA Director Maher Hijazin told The Jordan Times.

“We have all the documents to prove that there is no discovery,” he stressed.

Industry experts

Although the announcement was shocking to many, it came as no surprise to Jordanian Geologists Association (JGA) President Khaled Shawabkeh.

He claimed that the NRA drilled at least five wells in the area in the 1990s, and found oil in different quantities, although their commercial viability was not verified.

Lack of support and technical difficulties brought on by the area’s topography prevented the authority from any further exploration, and the subject was shelved, he said.

“In my view, Trans-Global has made an oil discovery. The quantity and commercial quality of this discovery should now be explored,” the JGA president stressed.

Weatherford, Reeves Logging Ltd., one of 14 third-party companies that performed assessment studies for Trans-Global on the Isaal and Wadi Mujib wells, said it could not confirm or deny the existence of oil in the area, as their only purpose was to log data, not analyse it.

Another industry source, however, told The Jordan Times that the independent third-party studies pointed to “a strong possibility” of commercially viable oil in the Dead Sea area.

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