The new discovery well, which lies 23 km to the north of Mamba South and 45 km from the coast, in water depths of 1,690m, reached a final depth of 5,330m and found a total of 186m gas pay in multiple high-quality Oligocene and Paleocene sands. The operator, ENI, now plans to drill at least five more wells this year on nearby prospects and structures to assess the total potential of the Mamba area.
At the same time, the 10,500 km2 Block 1 has been the site of yet further success, with appraisal well Lagosta 3, which was spudded in January, encountering high-quality sands, with 176m of gas pay. The reservoir is in communication with the Lagosta 1 discovery well, which lies 3 km further west, and up to 30 Tcfg have been discovered in the block so far. Lagosta 3 was drilled to a total depth of 4,180m in water depths of over 1,400m. The well was suspended for the rig to undertake flow testing at the Barquentine discovery, a few kilometres to the north. This was the first such testing undertaken in Mozambique by the operators, Anadarko, and the well successfully flowed at an equipment-constrained rate of 90 to 100 MMcfgpd with minimal pressure drawdown, suggesting that production could be as high as 200 MMcfgpd.
Anadarko and its partners are now in the process of designing a scheme to exploit the gas, with a flexible offshore production system at the fields, which are about 55 km from the coast. This will send the gas to an onshore LNG processing plant with initially two trains, but with the flexibility to expand to six if necessary. According to Anadarko, the project is well under way to becoming the second largest LNG project in the world.
