Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 23
By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Tethys Petroleum hopes to drill its first well by the middle of 2014 on its new Klymene oil prospect in Kazakhstan, the company's chairman, David Robson, told Nefte Compass in an interview.
Klymene, around 60 kilometers west of the company's Doris oil field, holds an estimated gross unrisked mean prospective recoverable oil resources totaling some 422 million barrels of oil, according to a new report by US auditors Gustavson Associates.
"That structure is aerially 10 times the size of Doris. It is a cracking prospect," Robson says.
It will probably be midyear before Tethys gets the go-ahead from the Kazakh government to drill in Klymene, which lies in the company's Kul-Bas exploration and production contract area.
Tethys will fund the well with the $75 million it is getting from SinoHan, the oil and gas vehicle of Chinese private equity fund HanHong. The Chinese fund has farmed in for 50 percent plus one share of Tethys Kazakhstan, the company that holds all Tethys' assets in the republic, including fields and terminals.
Tethys is focused on oil and gas exploration and production activities in Central Asia and the Caspian Region.