LGO En­er­gy plc's lo­cal op­er­at­ing sub­sidiary, Goudron E&P Lim­it­ed (GEPL), has re­ceived ap­proval from Petrotrin and the Min­istry of En­er­gy for the first of its planned Ma­yaro Sand­stone in­fill wells, cur­rent­ly des­ig­nat­ed H18E G11(5).

In an an­nounce­ment post­ed on its web­site yes­ter­day, LGO said the well will be drilled ver­ti­cal­ly to a to­tal depth of 1,250 feet and is ex­pect­ed to in­ter­sect the Ma­yaro Sand­stone oil pay be­tween 650 and 1,050 feet.

GEPL has out­line ap­proval for up to 45 new wells in the Goudron Field and a pro­gramme of up to 70 in­fill pro­duc­tion wells to the field-wide Ma­yaro Sand­stone oil pay is con­tem­plat­ed, the com­pa­ny said.

It will start with the cur­rent ini­tial well pro­gramme which will be ex­pand­ed based on re­sults and the avail­abil­i­ty of fund­ing.

LSO said: "GEPL has award­ed a drilling con­tract to spe­cial­ist drilling con­trac­tor Sadhna Pe­tro­le­um Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed for the drilling for two firm and a num­ber of op­tion­al wells on a turnkey drilling ba­sis us­ing a small foot­print con­ven­tion­al (ro­tary ta­ble) drilling rig.

"Site prepa­ra­tion will be con­duct­ed by Sadhna and will com­mence as soon as prac­ti­cal, af­ter which rig mo­bil­i­sa­tion and drilling are an­tic­i­pat­ed to com­mence with­out de­lay. In­di­vid­ual wells are ex­pect­ed to take about 14 days to drill and com­plete for im­me­di­ate pro­duc­tion."

Bedrock Drilling Lim­it­ed, a UK based spe­cial­ist drilling en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny, has been en­gaged to pro­vide drilling en­gi­neer­ing su­per­vi­so­ry sup­port to the pro­gramme. Bedrock will pro­vide a site su­per­vi­so­ry team dur­ing drilling and ad­di­tion­al en­gi­neer­ing and ad­vi­so­ry sup­port to GEPL.

LGO is now seek­ing per­mis­sion to drill the sec­ond Ma­yaro Sand­stone in­fill well in the pro­gramme, des­ig­nat­ed H18E N4.

"We are pleased to be able to start 2017 by an­nounc­ing that the prac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tions for an im­mi­nent re­turn to de­vel­op­ment drilling are now firm­ly un­der­way and that we can ex­pect drilling of the Ma­yaro in­fill pro­gramme to get start­ed short­ly as an­nounced in De­cem­ber," Neil Rit­son, LGO's CEO, said.