cairn operational update - morocco, page-13

Sounds like they are saying they didn't find any reservoir. Rather than they found a reservoir but the porosity had mysteriously disappeared.

Cap Juby is further offshore than Tarfaya, isn't it? So it wouldn't be unusual to find poorer porosity the further offshore you go. Better sands tend to be closer inshore.

So it sounds like a problem with their facies mapping rather than anything else. You can kind of tell porosity from seismic with some of the new-fangled seismic techniques like AVO, but it's a very inexact science, especially when you don't have good well control to back it up.

We don't call geophysicists "geofantasists" for nothing - they tend to get carried away and will tell management with fancy Powerpoint slides that they can see all sorts of things. DHIs, gas chimneys, flat spots, AVO anomalies, etc.

Overall no real effect on TPT's chances. If they'd found oil there it would have been a big positive, but not finding anything is fairly neutral to TPT I would think. Rather than negative.