US-based Harvest Natural Resources is seeing good progress in its drilling operations at Al Ghubar North-1 (AGN-1) exploration well onshore Oman, the company said.

The (AGN-1) exploration well has reached a total depth (TD) of 10,482 feet  ahead of schedule, said the Texas-based company in a statement.

Harvest has an 80 per cent interest in Block 64 onshore Oman which has an area of 3,874 sq km.

The block was extracted from a pre-existing block (PDO's Block 6) to accelerate exploration for gas and gas condensate by the Omani Ministry of Oil and Gas, said the US company.

'Interpretation of the mudlog and wireline logs indicates no apparent hydrocarbon saturations within the principal stacked Haima targets in the Barik, Miqrat and Amin reservoirs; however, gas shows and residual hydrocarbons indicate that the structure was charged and failure is attributed to seal effectiveness,' it stated.

The well will be plugged and abandoned with gas shows, it added.

According to Harvest, the gas shows and hydrocarbon saturations are also present in the shallower limestones and dolomites of the Permian Khuff Formation.

Post-well evaluation will focus on determining the potential for non-associated gas reserves in the Permian Khuff and clastic Gharif reservoirs.

According to Harvest, drilling operations on the AGN-1 well progressed ahead of schedule with the well reaching TD 22 days ahead of the forecast drill time.

Consequently, the dry hole cost (DHC) will be $2.4 million lower than previously forecast.  Harvest expects to expense a majority of the DHC of $6.0 million in the first quarter of 2012, it added.-TradeArabia News Service