Norway’s Equinor (formerly Statoil) has reached the mid-point in drilling the Guanxuma wildcat on Block BM-S-8 in Brazil's Santos basin pre-salt province, writes Fabio Palmigiani.

Upstream understands the Guanxuma campaign is presently crossing the salt layer with the Seadrill drillship West Saturn, on its way to a targeted final depth of more than 6600 metres that is expected to be reached in July.

“All I can say is that we are halfway through the drilling of Guanxuma,” said Equinor Brazil president Anders Opedal.

A few weeks ago, before drilling at Guanxuma started, Equinor carried out a drillstem test at the nearby Carcara Northwest discovery, which according to Opedal yielded good results.

“We got a lot of information from the DST. The objective was to get flow data, so we could put it into reservoir modelling and start future well planning,” Opedal told Upstream.

Carcara is a separate structure to Guanxuma that is estimated to hold recoverable reserves of between 700 million and 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Equinor has more resources at the adjacent North of Carcara area that was acquired last October in Brazil’s second pre-salt round, bringing the total volumes in the whole region to more than 2 billion boe.

“We will finalise Guanxuma and then, when we get all the necessary approvals, we will move the rig to spud one well in North of Carcara to verify the volumes there,” Opedal added.

A second well at North of Carcara could be on the cards in 2019, but Opedal would not confirm it, saying Equinor will keep its one-well commitment at this point.

He said Equinor and its partners are already working on field development plans for Carcara, with commercial production eyed for 2023 or 2024, and is in talks with federal pre-salt entity PPSA regarding a pre-unitisation agreement for the two areas.

Opedal explained: “We have a production sharing contract in the north and a concession contract in the south, so we need to have a very special unitisation process for Carcara.”

“Once we drill all the necessary wells, we will know exactly the amount of volumes in each area to conduct the full unitisation agreement.”

Equinor operates BM-S-8, home of the maiden Carcara find, with a 36.5% stake, and is partnered by US supermajor ExxonMobil on 36.5%, Portugal’s Galp Energia on 17% and Brazilian independent Barra Energia on 10%.

Equinor also operates North of Carcara with a 40% stake with ExxonMobil holding 40% and Galp the remaining 20%.

Weekly

Halfway there at Guanxuma wildcat