Cairn has announced the results of the SNE-5 appraisal well offshore Senegal where operations have been safely and successfully completed ahead of schedule and under budget following drilling, logging, drill stem testing and the setting of pressure gauges.

Cairn’s analysis and integration of the dataset collected is continuing with initial results in line with expectations.

The SNE-5 well has been plugged and abandoned and the Stena DrillMAX drill ship is moving location to commence operations shortly on the Vega-Regulus (VR-1) well, ~5 km to the west of the SNE-1 discovery.

VR-1 has two objectives: an Aptian exploration target and an appraisal objective in the SNE field.

The well will target the Vega-Regulus exploration prospect in the Aptian Carbonates underlying the SNE field which has potential gross mean consolidated prospective resource of more than 100 million barrels.

In addition, the well will further appraise the SNE field targeting potential incremental resources. The results will help narrow the range of SNE field volumes and also allow the JV time to fully integrate the results of SNE-5 prior to moving to appraisal well SNE-6 to complete the planned interference test.