Oil and gas company Chariot has signed a contract with offshore drilling firm Stena Drilling to use its Stena Don drilling rig for the Anchois gas appraisal well within the Lixus licence, offshore Morocco.
Drilling operations are expected to begin in December 2021 and are expected to take up to approximately 40 days.
The objective of the drilling program is to unlock the development of the discovered sands by confirming the gas resource volumes, reservoir quality, and well productivity, provide a future production well for the development of the field, and potentially deepen the well into additional low-risk prospective sands with the aim of establishing a larger resource base for longer-term growth.
Adonis Pouroulis, Acting CEO of Chariot, commented: "As a team, we have been keenly focused on delivering the drilling campaign that we recently raised money for, and we are pleased that this contract award brings us a step closer to achieving this. We look forward to keeping our stakeholders appraised we get closer to the spud date."
Back in July, Chariot appointed David Brecknock to the role of Drilling Manager, to lead the planned Anchois gas appraisal well drilling.
"David has considerable experience with high profile deepwater offshore drilling with over 20 years of international experience gained with Enterprise, Shell, BG, Devon, Perenco, Ophir as well as leading Chariot's drilling in Namibia in 2018," Chariot said at the time.
Chariot has previously said that the Anchois development concept consisted of subsea production wells tied to a subsea manifold, from which a subsea flowline and umbilical connect the field to an onshore Central Processing Facility, where gas is processed and then delivered into the Maghreb-Europe Gas pipeline via an onshore gas flowline.