Exploration well 14-15 km deep planned to be drilled in Caspian depression

  The geological exploration works in the Caspian depression as a part of the Eurasian energy project will begin in 2015 and their cost will total almost $500 million, said Baltabek Kuandykov, President of the Kazakhstan Society of Oilmen-Geologists.

“The resources of the Caspian Sea basin and especially the Caspian depression have been estimated by the independence scientific-research institutes of Russia  at 40 billion tons of conditional fuel. We forecast that there are almost 20 big fields have the hydrocarbon resources over 300 million tons,” Kuandykov said at the session of the round table “New Possibilities of Geological Exploration in Kazakhstan. Eurasian Project” in Astana on Tuesday. 

He added that “one third of the Caspian depression belongs to Russia and two thirds and maybe slightly more is owned by Kazakhstan.”

“We have spoken with the Russian geologists and geophysicists as well as officials and we have come to conclusion that the Caspian Sea basin must be studied as a single geological basin,” Kuandykov said. He explained that “Eurasian project is planned to be implemented to study the potential resources of the region.”

“The first stage is collection and processing of the geological and geophysical materials of previous years, the second stage is conducting wide-scale geophysical study of new regional profiles and the third stage is drilling of a new parametrical well Caspian 1. According to our preliminary estimates, the geological exploration works of the above-mentioned three stages will total almost $500 million,” Kuandykov said.

He said the depth of the Caspian 1 well in the central part of the depression will be about 14-15 km.—0--