Much-awaited exploration results in Mozambique and French Guiana have disappointed for UK-listed Tullow Oil Plc (TLW) and its partners.
Last week, Tullow and Norway’s Statoil ASA (STL) announced that drilling at the Cachalote-1 exploration well offshore Mozambique failed to find oil and found only non-commercial gas. The well has now been abandoned.
Aside from its ongoing success in Kenya and in Ghana’s Jubilee field, Tullow has had a bad run this year in terms of exploration. Tullow has also come up dry in French Guiana, where it made the country’s first crude discovery in 2011. The GM-ES-4 exploration well in the Cebus prospect--operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and part-owned by France’s Total SA (FP)--revealed no hydrocarbons.
"The Cebus-1 well was an ambitious wildcat exploration well which did not encounter hydrocarbons," Tullow exploration director Angus McCoss told reporters.
Tullow has declined more than 11% this year, with the biggest declines coming with poor results in French Guiana announced in April, and delays to exploration projects announced for Ethiopia, which Tullow is eyeing as a tie-in to major finds in Kenya.
"The potential for discovering oil in this region remains after we encountered wet gas shows in the deeper sidetrack. We will integrate this valuable data into our regional model to improve our chances of unlocking the oil play potential in off- shore Mozambique," The Independent quoted McCoss as saying following the Mozambique announcement.
By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com
