N. Oates

Scott Pickford, Croydon, UK

ABSTRACT: An Integrated Exploration Approach in Deepwater Orange Basin, South Africa

The Orange Basin situated off the western coast of South Africa remains one of the largest under-explored basins (c.70,000 sq.km) in the world. The basin straddles the South African/Namibian boundary but with far the greater proportion lying in South African waters. To date only 30 exploratory wells have been drilled in the entire basin and these are all situated in the shallow water shelf area. The most significant discovery is the as yet undeveloped Kudu gas field offshore Namibia although several other as yet uncommercial oil and gas discoveries have been made in South African waters. Until very recently no wells had been drilled in the South African part of the basin for a period of nearly 8 years. However, in the latter part of 2000 Forest Oil drilled a successful appraisal well close to the A-K1 gas discovery that was originally made back in1976. In September 2000 Global Energy Holdings, LLC signed a 12month Technical Co-operation Agreement with the Petroleum Agency, Republic of South Africa for Block 3B/4B. This region comprises an area of 28,992sq.km (7,160,777 acres) and is covered by c.14000km of 2D seismic data ranging in age from 1973-1993. Over 1000km of seismic has been reprocessed by Scott Pickford to improve imaging in key prospective regions. The Block has been previously tested by eight wells, which were all plugged and abandoned. These wells are all situated on the shallower water shelf portion of the block. This paper focuses on the currently untested deepwater (500-2000m) area.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90906©2001 AAPG Annual Convention, Denver, Colorado