News

February 20, 2009

Heritage Oil’s Production Numbers Get A Buck Up As West Bukha Comes Onstream

Given Heritage Oil’s run of success in Uganda and the company-making potential of its acreage in Kurdistan, it is easy to overlook the FTSE 250 company’s minority stake in Block 8 offshore Oman. Yet this ten per cent toehold in the 423 sq km Strait of Hormuz licence now looks set to deliver a step change in daily production for the London-listed firm, thereby providing the comfort that can only come with some degree of self-sufficient financing.

Heritage entered Oman in 1996, at which point the Bukha gas-condensate field was already two years in production. That field is now in decline, with net daily production of 131 barrels of liquids per day and an expected expiry date of 2011. This is not the end of the story on Block 8, however, with the diminishing volumes from Bukha now joined by first production from the West Bukha discovery, which straddles the Oman/Iran border.

West Bukha was discovered in the 1970s but it wasn’t until the noughties that the potential development of the accumulation gained momentum. In late 2006, the West Bukha-2 appraisal/development well was drilled, the fourth well to test the structure. Two of the earlier wells (drilled between 1975 and 1986) flowed gas/condensate and one was water-bearing. The West Bukha-2 well was a success, producing a combined flow-rate of 12,750 bpd of light 42-degree API oil and 26 million cubic feet...