ONGC Videsh strikes oil in Colombia

OVL holds 70 per cent participating interest in the block at the llanos basin in Colombia

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the foreign investment arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has discovered oil on an onland block, CPO-5, in Colombia, it said in a statement on Sunday.

“OVL has struck oil at two places in the first well drilled on the Block CPO-5 and produced 120-300 barrels per day on testing,” the OVL statement said. “The oil is heavy in nature with an API (American Petroleum Institute) gravity of about 14. To assess the potential and commerciality of the oil find, extended production testing will be taken up in due course for the remaining objects within the upper Mirador Formation at a depth of 9,533 feet,” the statement further said.

OVL holds 70 per cent participating interest in the block located at the llanos basin of Colombia. The project was under phase-1 of exploration, with a commitment of drilling two exploratory wells.

According to the statement, the first of the two commitment wells, Kamal-1X, was spudded on October 29, 2012, and drilled to the target depth of 10,500 feet. The company is gearing for spudding the second well in the block this month. "The results from the two wells will lead to an increase in exploratory efforts in the block, which has an inventory of exploration leads based on the studies made so far," the statement said.

The wholly-owned subsidiary of ONGC got 100 per cent participating interest in CPO-5, following a bidding in 2008. It later hived off 30 per cent stake to Petrodorado Energy Ltd to reduce investment risks involved in undertaking exploratory activities. Till the last financial year, OVL had invested $18.4 million.