1 billion barrel potential... all i can do is laugh. The oil and gas companies of the world play pass the parcel with Tunisian permits. Has to be one of the worst known oil and gas basins of the world. Multiple small prospects. Poor reservoir quality. Low sand porosity. High concentration of inert gases - 15-30% Carbon dioxide, 15% Nitrogen and 1-3% Hydrogen sulfide.
Many of the fields identified on those maps are fields that have been drilled and abandoned. Just one example is the Birsa Field which has been drilled and not touched. Tazerka is another one, abandoned after producing approximately 22 mmboe.
Oudna prospect - potential recoverable resource was estimated at 50 mmboe
Oudna field is currently in production (producing since 2006). Here we have a company who were lucky to lease an FPSO with the required technology to extract the resource. Due to poor reservoir quality they had had to use water injection to maintain reservoir pressure. They have also required a robust artificial lift mechanism to attempt to maintain production rates (One of the biggest in the world). They were producing at 20,000 bopd for 6 months (production commenced Nov 2006) it has now fallen off. In total they have produced about 15.6 million barrels since Dec 2008 (if you assume 20,000 bopd since Now 2006-Dec 2008) and Reserves at Jan 2009 are now 1 mmboe (Net Reserves to Lundin 0.4mmboe with 40% stake). Therefore the likelihood of them even reaching 20 million of the potential recoverable resource is slim.
They moved to Oudna from Isis prospect due to rapid reservoir pressure decline, combined with increased water production.
Basically this is why no majors operate in Tunisia, so Ron you can forget about a Shell. They realized this area was rubbish in the late 1970s.
Not saying this isn't still a decent play, can still provide you with a great return, but I'm just letting you all know a little about what your putting your money in. Might want to divide that 270 mmboe potential in half.
Goodluck...
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