PetroNeft’s reserves have been revised following the recent independent reserve appraisal conducted by Ryder Scott Petroleum Consultants in accordance with reserve definitions approved by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and World Petroleum Congress.
The 2P reserve increase is primarily related to the new field discovery at Kondrashevskoye (formerly Korchegskaya) which has 8.11 million bbls of oil. The oil water contact for this field has yet to be defined and the Company believes the 2P reserves are likely to increase significantly with further delineation. If the oil water contact is defined by the structural spill point, which is the case for the nearby Lineynoye, West Lineynoye and Tungolskoye fields, then the 2P reserves at Kondrashevskoye could approach 20 million bbls.
The significant increase in 3P reserves is based on the detailed reinterpretation of vintage well logs at a number of prospects within Licence Area 61, by Tomsk Geophysical Company (TGK) and also the result from the West-Korchegskaya no. 1 well which encountered a 25 metre sandstone interval, with hydrocarbon potential in the Lower Jurassic section. The log reinterpretation study was undertaken last year following the successful testing of by-passed Cretaceous pay by Imperial Energy at the Kiev-Eganskoye field on adjacent block 80. TGK is the same petrophysical contractor that identified the by-passed Cretaceous pay at Kiev-Eganskoye and they identify potential by-passed pay in the Cretaceous, Upper Jurassic and Lower to Middle Jurassic intervals in several of the old wells drilled in Licence 61. Ryder Scott has incorporated the results of this study into their reserve calculation of the Cretaceous and Lower to Middle Jurassic possible reserves which were not previously calculated for Licence 61.
The Russian Registered (GKZ) reserves for Licence 61 were updated in December 2008 and the C1+C2 booked reserves now equal 95 million bbls. These reserves are not calculated on exactly the same criteria as the SPE reserves, but there should be general alignment between the C1+C2 and 2P numbers.
