Sri Lanka Announces New Exploration Licensing Round; IHS will Facilitate Road Shows

Round to offer 13 blocks in the Sri Lankan sectors of the Cauvery and Mannar basins

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Tuesday, February 19, 2013 12:27 pm EST

"We are pleased to assist the PRDS with the facilitation of its road shows for their second licensing round,"

The Petroleum Resources Development Secretariat (PRDS), the government agency responsible for overseeing all petroleum exploration and production-related activities in Sri Lanka, has enlisted IHS (NYSE:IHS), the leading global source of information and analysis, to facilitate a series of road shows to launch the Second Sri Lankan Licensing Round in March 2013. Thirteen blocks have been designated in the Sri Lankan sectors of the Cauvery and Mannar basins, located to the North and West of Sri Lanka, respectively.

 

 

The opening road show for the Second Sri Lankan Licensing Round is scheduled for   Thursday, March 7, 2013, at the St Regis Hotel in Houston. Subsequent road shows will follow Tuesday, March 12, 2013, at the Stevenson Lecture Theatre (West Foyer) in the British Museum, on Great Russell Street in London, and on Thursday, March 21, 2013, at the Singapore Hilton Hotel, on Orchard Road in Singapore.

 

"We are pleased to assist the PRDS with the facilitation of its road shows for their second licensing round," said Tim Hemsted, managing director, upstream consulting at IHS. "We look forward to bringing together government representatives with members of industry and representatives of oil companies to discuss the blocks on offer."

 

During each road show, PRDS staff will present a technical overview of the nominated blocks and will discuss the legal and fiscal terms that will govern the licensing round, and will also address the timetable and bidding procedures for the round. In addition, at each venue, Saliya Wickramasuriya, the PRDS director general, will be available for private meetings with interested oil companies following the technical presentations.

 

The blocks on offer in the Cauvery basin range in size from 2,403 square kilometers (km²), in the shallow waters of the Palk Straight, between Sri Lanka and India, to 4,566 km² in deep water areas to the northeast of Sri Lanka. The blocks in the Mannar basin are larger, ranging in size from 2,714 km² to 8,120 km² in the deep to very deep waters of the Gulf of Mannar.

 

Although there have been no oil or gas discoveries in the Sri Lankan sector of the Cauvery basin, the Indian sector of the basin has significant oil and gas fields.  The nearest discovery to the Sri Lankan sector is PH-9-1, located 30 kilometers from the Sri Lankan - Indian maritime border. The fields and discoveries in the Indian sector have confirmed that the Cauvery basin has an active petroleum system.

 

The Mannar basin hosts two significant and potentially commercial discoveries, which were made by Cairn Lanka Private Limited (CLPL) in 2011. The first well drilled by CLPL, well CLPL-Dorado-91H/1z, discovered gas condensate in Cretaceous-aged sandstones. The second well, CLPL-Barracuda-1G/1, made a separate gas condensate discovery in the western part of block SL 2007-01-001, which had been awarded to CLPL in the First Sri Lankan Licensing Round in 2007.

 

CLPL's third well, Dorado North 1, was a dry hole. CLPL is reported to have committed to a second exploration period on the block, and has recently spudded its fourth well, CLPL-Wallago 50-H/A (Wallago-F3). According to the PRDS, speculative seismic data over the Mannar basin suggests it has significant potential for large, world-class structural and stratigraphic prospects in the Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous/Paleocene syn-rift and post-rift sections.

 

Road show entrance is open to oil and gas and major service companies, but pre-registration is required. To register, please send your name, title, company, full contact details and the date and road show location you would like to attend to dan.tidwell@ihs.com. Data rooms for the round will be held in the IHS offices in Houston, London and Singapore. To request a data room appointment or schedule a private meeting with PRDS representatives, please contact dan.tidwell@ihs.com or tim.hemsted@ihs.com.

 

Media Please Note: Limited seating is available at the road show presentations for credentialed members of the business and energy industry news media interested in covering the event, but all media must register in advance by contacting Melissa Manning at melissa.manning@ihs.com or +1 832-458-3840. Please send name, organization, phone, e-mail, and organization Web site.

 

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