DUSHANBE, May 16, 2009, Asia-Plus — Tethys Petroleum Limited (Tethys) has completed an initial independent reserve and resource report for its assets in Tajikistan.
These assets are held by Tethys” subsidiary Kulob Petroleum Limited under the Bokhtar Area Production Sharing Contract (“PSC”), which covers an area of some 34,751 square kilometers in south-western Tajikistan, (the “PSC Contract Area”).
According to the Tethys Dushanbe Office, this is the first time a report has been commissioned for these assets under the rules of Canadian National Instrument 51-101 and was carried out by the UK based reserve auditing firm TRACS International.
No new wells have been drilled to date by Tethys in Tajikistan with the focus to date having been on designing and implementing an extensive seismic program that will be completed later in 2009, and working over existing old wells that have provided invaluable data for future drilling prospects as well as limited gas production.
The report concludes that the gross unrisked Prospective Resources in the area at a “mid case” total some 1,132 million barrels oil equivalent (MMboe). Some of these Prospective Resources will be further targeted by the current seismic acquisition program (which has just commenced in the Dushanbe area), and which should provide additional data in order to identify the most optimal drilling targets as well as firming up the potential of existing discoveries.
Some of the key conclusions of the Resource Report were that there are a large number of leads in several horizons that have been identified in the PSC Contract Area and that a large number of these leads are relatively shallow and would be relatively inexpensive to drill. The Resource Report states that one of the uncertainties with this play is the type of hydrocarbon that would be encountered and the resources reported are based on the assumption of a 60% chance of encountering oil and a 40% chance of encountering non-associated gas. The “mid case” is considered the best estimate based upon the outcome of a probabilities analysis. This term is a measure of central tendency of the uncertainty distribution.
TRACS also assessed specific existing discoveries in the PSC Contract Area with a view to establishing Reserves and Contingent Resources within the framework of the existing limited data set which will be improved on and developed by the ongoing Tethys seismic and future drilling.
On the Komsomolsk Field, located near and under the city of Dushanbe, Prospective and Contingent Resources were assessed at a gross unrisked summed mid-case of some 2.12 billion cubic meters (Bcm)) of natural gas. The Company hopes to drill directional inclined wells to target these Reserves and Resources, which lie beneath the city of Dushanbe and have not been developed primarily due to the lack of directional drilling technology. Any success on these wells would move the Prospective Resources into the Reserves category. This field lies next to Dushanbe and has existing pipeline infrastructure in place. Currently Tajikistan imports almost all its gas at a price of US$240 per thousand cubic meters.
