Drilling operations at the Jaguar-1 well in the Georgetown Block, Guyana, have ended and the well will be plugged and abandoned at a depth of 4,876 metres, without reaching the primary objective, according to a Tullow Oil press release.
The decision to stop drilling at this point was unanimously agreed by all partners based on safety criteria and was taken after reaching a point in the well where the pressure design limits for safe operations prevented further drilling to the main objective.
Jaguar-1 was a high pressure, high temperature well which was spudded in February 2012 using the Atwood Beacon rig. Whilst the primary Late Cretaceous objective was not reached, samples of light oil were successfully recovered from two Late Cretaceous turbidite sands above the primary objective.
The news sent shares down 29p, 2%, to £14.04, as they explained the drilling was stopped because of the high pressures at such deep levels.
Tullow had been drilling for five months and will hope the area in the Atlantic off the South American coast can yield good results.
The company found large oil deposits to the east of Guyana, off the coast of French Guiana, last year and believes the area could provide rich picking, matching the discoveries in Ghana on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.
