Risk-ready PPL ups exploration ante

KARACHI: With big as well easy hydrocarbon finds in the country’s known basins becoming rare, Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) has decided to venture into risk-prone yet potential frontier areas to increase its reserve base and open up new plays for exploration, a statement said on Thursday.

“Under this strategy, since 2009, 13 exploratory wells have been drilled in Balochistan alone,” the explorer said.

“PPL recently achieved a historic milestone with the discovery of significant gas reserves from Morgandh X-1 in Margand Block, Balochistan on the Kalat plateau.”

Notably, this was the westernmost discovery in Pakistan, opening up a new sub-basin for future exploration, PPL said, adding that further deepening up of Morgandh X-1 resulted in a longer gas bearing column of about one kilometre, indicating larger reserves potential than estimated earlier which will be firmed up based on appraisal wells.

“The discovered column of gas along with map indicates a volume close to one trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas,” the company said.

It added that it would also pave the way for attracting interest from foreign Exploration and Production (E&P) companies to invest in frontier exploration and supplement the efforts of public sector companies, such as PPL, which had always provided required impetus.

It must be noted that with a portfolio of 48 exploration blocks and 59 fields and discoveries, PPL made a record number of 11 discoveries in one year during 2018-19 with a further two in 2019-20, achieving a reserves replacement ratio of 110 percent.

Moin Raza Khan, MD & CEO PPL, said, “E&P (exploration and production) business is cost, technology-and risk-intensive with a long gestation period, especially for gas”. “These are compounded in frontier areas with mountainous terrain, where access, security and infrastructure issues are major hurdles. Our success in Morgandh suggests our conviction.”

Khan said the PPL had drilled 63 exploratory wells since 2012, resulting in 22 discoveries in operated areas with a success ratio of 35 percent adding about 2.764 Tcf gas and 127 Mbbls oil in place.