Repsol restarted drilling on the deepwater Welwitschia-1A well in Walvis Bay, offshore Namibia, on 4 June, according to partner Tower Resources.
Repsol is operator of Namibia PEL0010, containing Welwitschia. Drilling on the first Welwitschia well, using the Rowan Renaissance drillship (pictured), started 24 April, but it stopped when wellhead housing “slumped”. Work on the second well, Welwitschia-1A, 50m from the first location, was then spudded 1 May, but also delayed when issues with the blow out preventer (BOP) control system were discovered.
May 27, Rig owner Rowan Companies said the Rowan Renaissance had been pulled from service, after experiencing equipment problems with its subsea systems on 19 May, and that it expected to return the rig to normal operatons by early June.
The Rowan Renaissance was the first of three new drillships delivered for Rowan from Hyundai Heavy Industries. The GustoMSC P10,000 design drillships will be capable of drilling wells to depths of 40,000 feet in waters of up to 12,000 feet.
The Welwitschia-1 prospect is targeting net risked recoverable resources of 496MMboe to Tower's 30% interest, putting the total estimate at about 1.6billion boe. The well will intersect up to five separate reservoir targets ranging from the Palaeocene-Maastrichtian to the Albian Carbonate sequence at a potential total depth (TD) of 3000m (true vertical depth subsea). The operator expects this to take up to 46 days.
Rig mobilization had taken longer than expected "owing to prolonged acceptance-testing by Repsol in advance of it taking the drillship on a three-year contract,” Tower said in an earlier statement.
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