Unlocking Egypt’s Western Desert: The next Eagle Ford?

When people think of unconventional oil, their minds prob­ably go straight to North America, where long hori­zontals and multilaterals drilled in heavily faulted plays have unlocked massive gas, liquids, and heavy oil reserves. But there is similar geolog­ical potential stirring in unexpected corners of the world. It is therefore not a surprise that there are compa­nies from both the USA and Can­ada exporting the technology and know-how built up in their backyard to new places.

ExxonMobil’s recently an­nounced agreement with Azerbai­jan’s SOCAR to pursue unconven­tional oil is an example of that trend. On a smaller scale, Canada-based Alvopetro acquired acreage in Sas­katchewan, where it plans to develop a discovery using horizontal drilling technology to subsequently export it to Brazil. Similarly, TAG Oil, also rooted in Canada, has its eyes on Egypt’s Western Desert.

Building on Egypt’s long history of conventional oil, TAG has now proven the potential of the Upper Cretaceous Abu Roash “F” Forma­tion with a horizontal test well – despite the well being shorter than planned. Apache and other opera­tors have seen similar encouraging results here, signalling that a field once conventionally tapped by Shell may hold a far richer unconven-tional promise.

Nathan Kneisel, a consulting geologist working for TAG, logged much of the exploratory geology on this project in Egypt. Having Geosteered 20 years of explora­tion and production wells in heav­ily faulted strata across the Cana­dian oil patch in the Peace Arch, Deep Basin and many more, Knei­sel was struck by the parallels he saw in Egypt.

“This was a fascinating project for me, seeing the potential that can be unlocked with the Geosteering skills and tools we’ve honed,” he explained. “Like the trial and error that uncovered Egypt’s first tombs, the Geosteering secrets the rock re­vealed in this first well are the key to unlocking this and many more fields across the Middle East.”

And the rocks themselves tell an enticing story. The Abu Roash For­mation – sometimes called the Eagle Ford of Egypt – are outcropping just 10 km south of Cairo near an an­cient pyramid site closed to the pub­lic. The dark limestones, deposited in a shallow marine setting, have also been used as building stones. Subdivided into seven units, it has long been known as a convention­al reservoir, but with a pay zone of over 20 m thick and an areal extent that far exceeds the size of most conventional oil fields, this natu­rally fractured and faulted interval is now ready to be navigated with modern directional drilling and geosteering tools.