Global Petroleum upbeat on latest estimates from offshore Namibia licence

Global Petroleum announced its estimate of prospective resources for PEL0094, or Block 2011A, offshore Namibia on Tuesday, where it holds a working interest of 85% and is the operator.

The AIM-traded firm said a total of 964 million barrels of unrisked gross technical prospective resources had been estimated in PEL0094.

Of particular note, it said the Albian carbonate reservoir at Welwitschia Deep was estimated to have best estimate unrisked gross prospective resources of 772 million barrels of oil, with a probability of success of 15%.

The prospective resources were based on 2D seismic data and geological information, including analogues, to which Global had access.

Global said it was confident that more prospects and leads would be identified once it has licensed and interpreted the remainder of the existing seismic data in PEL0094, both 2D and 3D, as well as tying in some of the analogous reservoirs in offset wells.

In particular, the plays in the Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene sandstones and Albian carbonates were partially covered by the existing 3D seismic data.

Further work could increase the geological chance of success of the prospective resources, and updated prospective resources and their associated geological chances of success would be calculated once work there was complete.

“Our technical work to date on PEL0094 confirms that the acreage is highly prospective,” said chief executive officer Peter Hill.

“We are delighted that our review of the data so far has confirmed the high level of prospectivity of PEL0094 generally, and of the Welwitschia Deep prospect in particular, which contains unrisked Best Estimate prospective resources of nearly 800 million barrels.

“Specifically, our work suggests that the Welwitschia-1A well - drilled in 2014 by previous licensees - was abandoned before reaching the underlying Welwitschia Deep prospect.”

Hill said that moreover, the 2014 well was drilled to the west of the newly-identified Marula lead, located in the Upper Cretaceous, which was the primary target of Welwitschia-1A.

“These factors, together with the scale of the prospective resource numbers which we have released today, demonstrate that both Welwitschia Deep and Marula are very attractive targets.”

At 1356 GMT, shares in Global Petroleum were up 33.79% at 1.94p.