Deep water in South Eas Asia (SEA). Sepertinya SEA dapat menjadi frontier area utk deep water exploration. Setelah Unocal dengan Gehem semoga diikuti penemuan lain di region ini.
RDP ======= Shell makes "important" oil find Mon 8 March, 2004 08:28 KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Shell says it has made an important oil find in deep waters off Malaysia's eastern Sabah state in a joint exploration with state oil firm Petronas and U.S.-owned ConocoPhillips. The Anglo-Dutch major gave no output estimates or reserves in an embargoed statement it released on Monday on the discovery at the Gumusut-1 exploration well, located in Deepwater Block J, northwest of Sabah. But an industry official linked to the exploration said it was possibly the biggest deepwater find in Malaysia. "The discovery is believed to be significant and believed to be the biggest such find to date in deepwater Malaysia," the official said. "It's too early to give quantitative volumetric estimates." U.S. energy firm Murphy Oil Corp found the first deepwater oil in Malaysia in 2002 in Sabah's Block K -- a four-million-acre (1.62-million-hectare) area with reserves estimated at 400 million to 700 million barrels. Shell said initial indications of crude charateristics at Gumusut showed oil which was light and of high quality. "These are still early days for Gumusut but this discovery is a key achievement," Shell Malaysia Chairman Jon Chadwick said in the statement. "Development will require that state-of-the-art technologies are deployed. The priorities are now to appraise the discovery and develop the field in a timely manner," Chadwick added. Shell SHEL.L said Gumusut-1 was drilled in a water depth of 1.0 km (0.63 miles) and completed in December last year, after 80 days of drilling. The successful exploration well had "a long gross oil column in excellent reservoir quality rock", it said. Shell Malaysia and ConocoPhillips hold equal 40 percent stakes in Gumusut field while Petronas Carigali, the exploration arm of Petronas , owns the 20 percent balance. Malaysia is Southeast Asia's second-biggest crude producer, after Indonesia, with an average output of 600,000 barrels per day, as estimated by its national oil company Petronas. It is also the world's third-largest producer of liquefied natural gas, after Indonesia and Algeria.
