Commencement of Drilling Oper

RNS Number : 0910S

Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd

03 September 2010

 



Not for release, publication or distribution in or into the United States or jurisdictions other than the United Kingdom and Bermuda where to do so would constitute a contravention of the relevant laws of such jurisdiction.

3 September 2010

Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. (AIM: GKP)

("Gulf Keystone" or "the Company")

Kurdistan Drilling Update:

Commencement of Drilling Operations on the Shaikan-3 Appraisal Well

Gulf Keystone announces the commencement of drilling operations on its Shaikan-3 appraisal well, effective September 2, 2010. This is a shallow appraisal well, very close to the Shaikan-1 well, the site of last year's discovery of the giant Shaikan oil field. The Company has a 75 percent working interest in the Block.

The Shaikan-3 well will be drilled to 1,100 meters (depending on well results) and is designed to evaluate and test the Cretaceous age intervals for producible oil volumes. Much of the Cretaceous interval in Shaikan-1 could not be completely logged, tested or evaluated due to lost circulation and other drilling difficulties. A large percentage of the interval is saturated with various hydrocarbons such as tar and heavy oil. The purpose of the Shaikan-3 well is to further evaluate these hydrocarbon volumes and determine if they are capable of commercial production. The total pore volume of the Cretaceous age interval is very large and, if the drilling and testing are successful,  the presence of readily producible hydrocarbons could add significantly to the 1.9 (P90) to 7.4 (P10) billion barrels of oil in place already discovered in the deeper Jurassic and Triassic formations. Drilling and testing is expected to take two months.

Enquiries:

Gulf Keystone Petroleum:	[phone]
Todd Kozel, Executive Chairman
Ewen Ainsworth, Chief Financial Officer
Strand Hanson Limited	[phone]
Simon Raggett / Rory Murphy / James Harris
Mirabaud Securities LLP	[phone]
Peter Krens
Brunswick Group LLP	[phone]
Patrick Handley / Pip Green

or visit: www.gulfkeystone.com

John Gerstenlauer, the Company's Chief Operating Officer, who has 31 years of relevant experience within the sector meets the criteria of a qualified person under the AIM note for mining, oil and gas companies and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this announcement.  Mr. Gerstenlauer is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Notes to Editors:

§  Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. (AIM: GKP) is an independent oil and gas exploration company 
focused on exploration in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq.

§  Gulf Keystone Petroleum International (GKPI) holds Production Sharing Contracts for 
fourexploration blocks in Kurdistan.

§  The Company's shares have traded on the AIM market, since listing on 8 Sept 2004.

§  Gulf Keystone Petroleum Limited is registered in Hamilton, Bermuda with offices in Erbil, Kurdistan, Algiers, Algeria and London, UK.

§  Oil initially-in-place is that quantity of petroleum that is estimated, as of a given date, to be contained in known accumulations prior to production. The range of uncertainty of the oil-in-place volumes is represented by a probability distribution with a low and high provided: P90 represents at least a 90% probability (high) that the quantities determined to be in place will equal or exceed the low estimate and P10 represents at least a 10% probability (low) that the quantities determined to be in place will equal or exceed the high estimate.

Not for release, publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States or jurisdictions other than the United Kingdom and Bermuda where to do so would constitute a contravention of the relevant laws of such jurisdiction. This document (and the information contained herein) does not contain or constitute an offer of securities for sale, or solicitation of an offer to purchase securities, in the United States or jurisdictions other than the United Kingdom and Bermuda where to do so would constitute a contravention of the relevant laws of such jurisdiction. The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States unless the securities are registered under the Securities Act, or an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act is available. No public offering of the securities will be made in the United States.

 

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