Cairn is pleased to announce the results of another successful appraisal well offshore Senegal. Rig performance continues to be excellent and operations have been safely and successfully completed ahead of schedule and under budget following drilling, logging and drill stem testing (DST).

The objective of the SNE-6 well, together with the previous successful SNE-5 well, was to flow oil from one of the principal units in the upper (400 series) reservoirs and demonstrate connectivity between the two wells. Pressure data from SNE-6 immediately confirmed good connectivity with SNE-5 and accordingly a short DST was performed.

Cairn’s analysis and integration of the collected dataset is continuing with initial results as follows:

- Main reservoir units, pressure data and fluid contacts are in line with previous SNE appraisal wells
- Multiple samples of oil were recovered during the DST: Analysis indicates oil of similar quality to previous wells
- Two DSTs were conducted within the Upper Reservoir units, as follows:
- DST#1A flowed from an 11m interval at a maximum rate of ~4,600 barrels of oil per day (bopd) on a 60/64” choke. A 48 hour main flow period was performed at ~3,700 bopd on a 52/64” choke.
- For DST#1B an additional 12m zone was added and the well flowed at a maximum rate of ~5,400 bopd on a 76/64” choke, followed by a 24 hour flow at an average rate of ~4,700 bopd on a 64/64” choke.
- Pressure data from SNE-6 has confirmed that the upper reservoir is connected with SNE-5, ~1.6km away. Work is ongoing to integrate this new data and to estimate the extent to which water flood secondary recovery can be applied to these upper reservoirs. Further analysis will be performed once interference test data has been collected from the observation wells, to determine the impact on modelled reservoir architecture, recoverable resource base and forward development plan. We expect to provide further information at our half year results in August.

Simon Thomson, Chief Executive Cairn Energy PLC, said:
“This is our ninth successful well in Senegal in three years. The results from this latest well together with SNE-5 and VR-1 provide essential data as we move towards submitting a development plan for the SNE field to the Government of Senegal in 2018.
Operations now move to FAN SOUTH as we continue to test significant further prospectivity in the extensive acreage position.”

SNE-6 is being plugged and abandoned and the Stena DrillMAX drill ship is moving location to commence operations at the FAN SOUTH exploration well, ~20km south west of the SNE-3 well in ~2,175m water depth. FAN SOUTH is targeting a mean prospective resource of more than 110 mmbbls with dual prospects; an Upper Cretaceous stacked multi-layer channelized turbidite fan prospect and a Lower Cretaceous base of slope turbidite fan prospect, which is equivalent to the FAN-1 2014 oil discovery.

About Cairn

Cairn is one of Europe's leading independent oil and gas exploration and development companies. Cairn has its headquarters in Edinburgh (Scotland) and operational offices in London (UK), Nuuk (Greenland), Stavanger (Norway) and Madrid (Spain).