My take is that the share price of PCL and Sintana has had a temporary pull back as a result of the non- commercial oil discovery at Nara-1 as indicated by the TotalEnergie presentation permit prospect map of 27 September 2023 and as alluded to by previous posters.
Nothing like the 'nearology' of a dry hole or non-commercial discovery to dampen investor enthusiasm! But often, every dark cloud has a silver lining!
Nara-1 was testing the Nara Prospect aka West Venus Prospect.
Based on public released data and seismic sections, the major Venus Oil Discovery was in thick Cretaceous Turbidite sands ‘ponded’ against local regional outboard structural highs to the west.
The Nara Prospect shows an encouraging seismic amplitude anomaly over the structural high and dipping away to the west.
The diagram posted by Oldgeo and modified to show the position of the just drilled Nara-1 on top of the structural high shows this and as per the seismic section from an Impact Oil Presentation.
I would surmise that the turbidite sands seen at Venus-1X were present at Nara-1, but thin where draped over the structural high, contained oil, but were non-commercial at this water depth of 2,000 metres.
In hindsight, this result from drilling structural highs and their overlying thinner draped sediments is consistent with the results at Cullinan-1 and to a more severe extent at Moosehead-1.
The take away from this for an explorer is not to drill the structural highs, but search out the ponded and lenticular turbidite sand plays with conformable seismic amplitude anomalies abutting local regional highs.
The Saturn Prospect still appears to satisfy this criteria based on the seismic sections provided by PCL.
Based on the Venus oil discovery analogue, I would suggest that what you would be looking for in the new Woodside 3D seismic is a major seismic amplitude anomaly conformable with the mapped Saturn stratigraphic trap and any internal structural closures.
I would speculate that GALP, seeking a major farminee to drill their two 4Q 2023 exploration wells in PEL 83 adjacent and to the south of PEL 87, have moved away from drilling structural highs and ‘the hypnotism of the closed contour’ and shifted focus toponded/lenticular Cretaceous sand plays as seen by their two just popped up ‘new’ Well-1X and Well-2X locations in the September 2023 Sintana Presentation.
All speculation on my part and the oil bearing ‘commercial’ potential of the wells to be drilled in PEL 87 and PEL 83 will be determined as usual by 'the rotary lie detector', the drill.
The Woodside 3D seismic results for PEL 87 and the drill results from GALP’s PEL 83 drilling program will be of interest to PCL shareholders
Risk in everything and DYOR.
(20min delay)