Baron Oil reports 'encouraging indications' from 3D reprocessing

Baron Oil updated the market on its offshore Timor-Leste Chuditch production sharing contract (PSC) on Wednesday, reporting that its local subsidiary SundaGas, which holds a 75% operating interest in Chuditch, had received interim products from seismic reprocessing.

The AIM-traded firm said the reprocessing involved 1,270 square kilometres of 3D seismic data along the trend of the Chuditch-1 gas discovery.

It said the reprocessing work was being conducted by TGS at its UK processing centre, in close collaboration with Baron's technical team.

Processed to an interim pre-stack depth migration, Baron said the initial data was already providing “encouraging indications” of improvements to the quality of subsurface imaging around the Chuditch gas discovery and offset prospects, compared to the legacy data.

Interpretations from the interim data would now be used to feedback iteratively into the final sophisticated seismic processing, which remained on schedule and on budget, with final data delivery to Baron during the second quarter of 2022.

The company said the final processed version would be “critical” in the re-evaluation of the Chuditch discovery and surrounding prospectivity, in particular the evaluation of in-place volumes and the location of potential future wells.

“The delivery of the initial products from the 3D seismic reprocessing is a significant milestone in our re-evaluation of the Chuditch trend,” said technical director Jon Ford.

“To date, encouraging improvements have been observed in data quality which we are confident will lead to a substantially clearer subsurface image in the final reprocessed products.

“In parallel, we continue with other studies which, when combined with the seismic reprocessing, will deliver a complete and high quality technical and commercial evaluation of this exciting asset during 2022.”

At 1124 GMT, shares in Baron Oil were down 2.22% at 0.06p.