S. Madura block drilling further delayed to Feb

First exploration drilling at South Madura block offshore East Java is further delayed to February 2007 due to unavailability of suitable casing, Cooper Energy Limited, the block?s interest holders said on Thursday.

The company said that the casing would have to be ordered directly from the mill and would take 6 months to complete.

The drilling of Kurnia-1 exploration well, which is originally planned to be spudded early this year, had been delayed several times due to rig and casing unavailability.

Cooper has 45 percent interest in South Madura PSC through operator South Madura Exploration Company Pte Ltd that holds 90 percent interest in the block.

Cooper Energy said last year that the preliminary geological evaluations of the 2D seismic had attributed P50 undiscovered reserves of 199 million barrels of oil at Kujung level and 256 billion standard cubic feet of gas at the shallower Ngrayong level.(alex)