Net to gross oil column and field size

Thought I would have a look at an oil filed that I am very familiar with offshore West Africa .. Chinguetti, as a comparison to what might be in the two prospects intersected in FAN-1. It was initially estimated at around 105 mbbl. It had an areal extent of 19 square km (19,300,000 m2).

At FAN-1 the secondary and upper target was North Canyon at 304mbbl potential and the primary target was the deeper and larger Beer prospect estimated at 632mbbl. The recent presentation has a graphic that is hard to interpret for the area of the North canyon prospect but its around half the size of the Beer prospect. This one labelled Albian Shelf Play looks to be around 28 km long and average of around 7 km wide .. so around 200 square km .. or 10 times the size of Chinguetti. And the estimated potential is 900mbbl .. not far off 10 times Chinguetti

The reason to compare areal sizes is that we know that Chinguetti had a gross oil column of 234m and a nett pay of 35m. So what this tells us is that with the FAN-1 well having found a net pay so far of 29m which is similar to Chinguetti, and being 10 times the areal size ... the pre-drill estimates are looking possible at around 900mbbl. That could be why CN said they were looking towards the top of the probable range of estimates.

I guess that was all to convince myself that a 29m net pay although looking small in comparison to the 500m gross column is nevertheless an indication of a large accumulation.

Comments?

H