ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL) and its partner IPR Red Sea Inc. have made a significant new oilfield discovery in their first exploration well North Ramadan-1A in the North Ramadan Concession, Gulf of Suez, Egypt.

North Ramadan Concession Agreement was signed for Petroleum Exploration and Exploitation in Gulf of Suez, Egypt between the Arab Republic of Egypt and The Egyptian General Corporation as one part and consortium of ONGC Videsh Ltd. and IPR Red Sea Inc. as the other part in 2005 with the contract being effective from August 8, 2005.

The North Ramadan concession is 290 sq. km in size and is surrounded by some of Egypt’s most prolific producing oil fields in the Gulf of Suez. Minimum work commitment in the first exploration phase of three years is drilling of three exploratory wells and acquisition of 50 sq km of 3D data and reprocessing of existing data.

ONGC Videsh Ltd. and IPR Red Sea Inc. have 70% and 30 % participating interest respectively in North Ramadan Concession.

North Ramadan-1A, the first commitment well for the North Ramadan concession, was drilled to total depth of 10,050 ft in the Lower Miocene Mheiherrat formation. A total of 133 ft over a gross interval of 174 ft of interbedded sandstones, shales and limestones in the Asl formation were perforated. The tests of the reservoir were conducted over a period of 3 days and tested at a naturally flowing rate of 2,979 BOPD and 1.5 MMscf/D with no water. The discovered oil is sweet crude of 36.50API.

The consortium anticipates other leads in the concession to be prospective and will focus attention on proving up additional potential during the upcoming drilling campaign. Total potential resources in the block exceed 200 MMBO. OVL and IPR are in the first phase (three years) of exploration in North Ramadan and have 2 remaining exploratory wells and acquisition of 3D seismic. The budget for the first phase work program of activities is approximately 45 million dollars.

(Daily India)