Irish oil and gas company Petroceltic International said on Friday it will
abandon an offshore exploration well in Romania after it failed to encounter
commercial quantities of hydrocarbons.
Also on Friday, its partner in the
offshore concession, Sterling Resources, said drilling may start again at two
other locations on the block in 2015.
The Muridava-1 exploration well on
the Muridava (EX-27) licence has been drilled to a total depth of 2,747 metres
but no commercial quantities of hydrocarbons in the primary Eocene, Paleocene
and Upper Cretaceous reservoir targets have been encountered, Petroceltic
International said in an operations update posted on its website.
The
well is currently being plugged and abandoned and the rig will be demobilised
from the location.
Petroceltic owns a 40% interest in the Muridava
licence and acts as the operator, Sterling Resources owns 40% and Petromar
20%.
In a separate statement, Sterling Resources CEO Jake Ulrich said:
"We are disappointed with the Muridava 1 well and that operating conditions
prohibited the reaching of the full targeted depth. We have two more drilling
locations on this Concession which we will be reviewing with the Operator and
will likely return to drilling on this Block in 2015."
Sterling is a
Canadian-listed international oil and gas company headquartered in Calgary,
Alberta with assets in the United Kingdom, Romania, France and the Netherlands.
Petroceltic International is a leading upstream oil and gas exploration
and production company, focused on North Africa, the Mediterranean and Black Sea
regions, and listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM Market and the Irish
Stock Exchange’s ESM Market. It has production, exploration and development
assets in Algeria, Egypt, Bulgaria, Romania, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Italy
and Greece.