Shell spuds Namibian wildcat
Oil major Shell has started drilling an exploration well in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia using a Valaris-owned drillship.
The Graff-1 well is located in Block 2913A in the Orange Basin where Shell is the operator and its partners are QatarEnergy and the national oil company of Namibia, Namcor.
QatarEnergy became Shell’s partner in two exploration blocks offshore Namibia, Block 2913A and Block 2914B, in April 2021. The blocks are located in the PEL 39 exploration licence, which is located in ultra-deep-water depths of about 2,500 metres, covering an area of approximately 12,300 square kilometres.
Namcor revealed on the 13th December that the well had been spud, saying the spudding is “quite a milestone for us and the country as a whole.”
Shell is drilling the Graff-1 well using the Valaris DS-10 drillship, which it hired for Namibian operations back in August 2021. Namely, the rig was awarded two one-well contracts with an estimated duration of 60 days each for work offshore Namibia and Sao Tome and Principe with the Namibian work slated to start first.
Valaris’ latest fleet status report shows that the drillship started its contract with Shell off Namibia in November 2021 and is set to end in January 2022. The contract off Sao Tome and Principe is scheduled to start in February 2022.
The update on Shell’s exploration well in Namibia comes only two weeks after TotalEnergies started drilling its own deep-water well in the country, the Venus-1X, located in Namibia Block 2913B (PEL 56).
Source: Offshore Energy Today