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Upland Resources Limited (LSE: UPL), the oil and gas company actively building a portfolio of attractive upstream assets in proven, mature South-East Asian and Mediterranean basins is pleased to report the following from its activities in the Tunisian Saouaf licence area (‘Saouaf Permit’) where the Company is currently engaged in a Joint Venture with the Tunisian National Oil Company (‘ETAP’):
Highlights:
- A rich array of new plays has been analysed, and fifteen resulting leads and prospects have been identified and conventionally named after Tunisian minerals, following a geological theme.
- The best-defined structure to date is a prospect named ‘Pyrite’ which is part of a large, isolated carbonate platform developed at Lower Cretaceous – Jurassic level.
- The Pyrite prospect is interpreted to contain 1.1 TCF of recoverable gas (P50 Prospective Resources), with a Chance of Success (CoS) at this stage estimated to be 22%.
- A very large lead, named ‘Halite’, has been mapped at Sub-Salt level.
- These first preliminary quantitative Tunisian results put Upland in a position to market in-depth findings to prospective farminees for the first time in addition to opening a data room.
- The 2021 work programme aims at reducing the exploration risk and increasing the Chance of Success of the identified leads and prospects, and includes reprocessing of vintage seismic lines, geochemical and geological studies.
Upland CEO Bolhassan Di commented:
“The results of Upland’s intense technical work thus far are extremely encouraging and a substantial and disciplined work programme is proving its value in providing a rich array of new plays. Beginning with the ‘Pyrite’ prospect alone, the most advanced of fifteen leads and prospects thus far, early interpretation estimate this new prospect has the potential to contain around 1.1 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas – a considerably attractive target and one which lends a great deal of technical confidence in the huge prospectivity of our Tunisian Saouaf licence area.
This is not all, we have ‘Halite’ a potentially very large lead also with strong multidisciplinary technical basis. Our expert technical team has recently been provided with additional vintage seismic data over the Saouaf license and we look forward to seeing the results of the integration of the additional data in this exciting area.
These are the first Tunisian results Upland has had that are based upon in-depth multidisciplinary interpretation of a substantial volume of hard data. These first fruits now allow Upland to open a data room and to begin to formally market the results of our studies to potential farm-in partners.
We are extremely pleased with the numbers regarding the preliminary quantitative assessment of the first prospect matured within the licence. The recent granting of a one-year extension to our Saouaf Prospecting Permit in Tunisia will also allow the Company to progress the work programme in a flexible manner against a background of Covid related travel restrictions. We are looking forward to disclosing further results of the planned quantitative prospectivity and risk assessment work on the Saouaf license.”
Details of Technical Interpretation Results
The Company is pleased to report that the multidisciplinary interpretation work done in the past few months on vintage exploration data is giving the first fruits. Fifteen leads have been identified and mapped, spread over a number of different exploration plays, namely the Eocene, Cretaceous, Jurassic and Pre-Salt plays. The leads have been conventionally named after Tunisian minerals, following a geological local theme.
The best-defined structure is a prospect named Pyrite, which is part of a large isolated carbonate platform developed at Lower Cretaceous–Jurassic level. This prospect is defined by thirteen seismic lines of good quality, most of which have been acquired in 2006 or in 2012 and reprocessed in 2013 by a previous operator. Pyrite is a large independent closure being part of a wide ring of carbonate build-ups of Early Cretaceous age (Ressas formation), which has been growing on top of a carbonate platform of Jurassic age (Nara formation). The top seal is represented by the shale-dominated Sidi Khalif and M’Cherga formations, which cap the carbonate build-up.
The Pyrite prospect is interpreted to contain between 0.7 and 1.6 TCF of recoverable gas (respectively Low=P90 and High=P10 of Prospective Resources), with a most likely value of 1.1 TCF (Best=P50), equivalent to approx. 183 MBoe (Table 1).
Table 1: Pyrite prospect (Lower Cretaceous – Jurassic) volumetric assessment.
| Low | Best | High | ||
| GOIP | (TCF) | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.1 |
| Prospective Resources | (TCF) | 0.7 | 1.1 | 1.6 |
| Low | Best | High | ||
| GOIP | (as MBoe) | 229 | 346 | 529 |
| Prospective Resources | (as MBoe) | 119 | 183 | 271 |
| The Chance of Success (CoS) of the Pyrite prospect is estimated to be 22%. | ||||
Two other structures have been identified close to Pyrite, belonging to the same Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous carbonate play, named respectively Galena and Marcasite.
The interpretation work will continue, also on the base of additional vintage seismic data received from ETAP after the TCM/OCM held on 12 January 2021.
The assessment of the potential of all the leads identified within the license area will continue including the promising structural closures at Sub-Salt level, where four structural highs have been identified so far. Their areal extension ranges between 61 km2 and 196 km2, with the largest one, named Halite lead, being the best defined on the basis of the seismic interpretation and its prominent Bouguer gravity anomaly.
The 2021 work programme, discussed with ETAP at the Operating Committee Meeting (‘OCM’) held on 12 January 2021, aims at reducing the exploration risk and increasing the Chance of Success of the identified leads and prospects, and includes the reprocessing of specific vintage seismic lines, and multidisciplinary geological and geochemical studies.
GLOSSARY
Boe Barrel of Oil Equivalent
CoS Chance of Success
GOIP Gas Originally In Place
MBoe Million Boe
OCM Operating Committee Meeting
TCF Trillion Cubic Feet
TCM Technical Committee Meeting
| Upland Resources Limited | www.upland.energy |
| Bolhassan Di, Chairman and CEO | Tel: +60 198 861 919 [email protected] [email protected] www.upland.energy |
| Optiva Securities Limited | |
| Christian Dennis (Corporate Broker) | Tel: 020 3137 1903 [email protected] www.optivasecurities.com |
| Flowcomms Ltd | |
| Sasha Sethi | Tel: +44 (0)7891 677441 [email protected] https://www.flowcomms.com/ |