Tower Resources signs contract for jack-up rig in Cameroon

Africa-focussed oil and gas company Tower Resources announced on Friday that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Tower Resources Cameroon, has signed a contract with Vantage Drilling International for the Topaz Driller jack-up rig to provide drilling operations for the NJOM-3 well.

The AIM-traded firm said the NJOM-3 well was planned for its 100%-owned-and-operated Thali licence, offshore Cameroon, in the second quarter of 2019.

It described the Topaz Driller as a Baker Marine Pacific Class 375 jack-up, which was recently mobilised to Cameroon by NewAge as operator for the Etinde license for two appraisal wells, and was currently employed in Gabon.

As it announced on 1 November, the terms of the contract were confidential, however the board said the economics were “consistent” with Tower's current drilling cost estimates.

The NJOM-3 well would be targeting gross mean contingent resources of 18 million barrels across the Njonji-1 and Njonji-2 fault blocks, located in the south of the Thali licence, with an expected monetary value at a 10% discount of $118m, as identified by the recent Oilfield International reserves report announced on 1 November.

Additionally, the NJOM-3 well was expected to de-risk an additional 20 million barrels of gross mean prospective resources across Njonji South and Njonji South-West.

The objectives of the NJOM-3 well were to test the thickness of reservoirs already identified by NJOM-1, and also to test for other reservoirs which could be present at the new location.

Tower said it would also provide key flow-rate data for the Njonji reservoirs from a drill stem test, which would allow reclassification of contingent resources into 2P reserves, as well as providing critical reservoir characterisation data for the potential field development strategy.

“We are very pleased to have secured the Topaz Driller, the same rig which our well management team at Bedrock Drilling used to drill the two recent Etinde wells,” said Tower Resources chairman and chief executive officer Jeremy Asher.

“We see the NJOM-3 well, in the second quarter of 2019, as just the beginning of our drilling activity on the Thali license, as we explained in our corporate presentation of last month.

“The rig timing remains consistent with that schedule, including its target of first oil by the end of 2019.”