Baron Oil (BOIL) Shares Traded Flat on Chuditch-2 Well Location

The Baron Oil PLC (LON: BOIL) share price traded flat after releasing a report detailing the location of its planned Chuditch-2 appraisal well in Timor Leste. The company issued a report detailing all the reasons behind the chosen well location and its drilling plans.

The newly published investor presentation provides a comprehensive overview of this location, outlines the meticulous selection criteria, details the strategies employed to reduce candidate location risks, offers fundamental well-design information and presents updates on the progress of drilling planning.

The selected site, situated approximately 4.8 kilometres from the Chuditch-1 discovery well, represents a significant expansion, underscoring the field's size and showcasing the company's unwavering confidence in the quality of the reprocessed seismic datasets.

Baron Oil’s strategic decision anticipates that the Chuditch-2 appraisal well will utilise a straightforward vertical design, focusing on tapping into a gas column exceeding 100 meters, in contrast to the 30-meter column discovered at Chuditch-1 back in 1998.

Subject to securing the necessary drill financing, the company is currently eyeing a late 2024 timeline for drilling the Chuditch-2 appraisal well, employing a jack-up drilling rig with an estimated 21-day drilling duration. Additional time, approximately 15 days, has been allocated for logging and conducting a drill stem test. 

The proposed location for Chuditch-2 boasts a water depth of 60 meters, and the well's target depth is 3,020 meters below the mean sea level. This decision capitalises on enhanced subsurface imaging from the reprocessed 3D seismic data, allowing for a simpler and more cost-efficient vertical well design. 

Notably, the well's trajectory has been planned to penetrate the Plover Formation reservoir at a minimum of 500 meters from the Chuditch fault, strategically mitigating location risk associated with fault imaging uncertainty on the southeast side of the field.

In terms of drilling planning, Baron has made key strategic moves, including recruiting a Well Operations Manager and scheduling planning workshops with government regulator ANP and joint venture partner TIMOR GAP.

Furthermore, the company is actively engaging with other regional operators to identify potential cost-saving synergies on a logistical and operational level. Preliminary documentation for environmental permits has been submitted to ANP as part of the first phase of this process.

Baron Oil (BOIL) share price. 

The Baron Oil (BOIL) share price traded flat today compared to Tuesday’s closing price of 0.08p.