Cairn starts drilling in Mannar basin block in Sri Lanka
17 Aug 2011
Cairn India has started drilling operations in Sri Lanka's Mannar Basin block SL 2007-01-001, which is believed to hold over one billion barrels of oil in a 30,000km the Mannar Basin site.
Cairn India, the Indian subsidiary of Edinburgh-based oil and gas exploration and production company Cairn Plc was awarded one of eight blocks in an area of 3,000sq km in Sri Lanka's north-western Mannar basin in 2008.
Cairn Lanka (Private) Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cairn India, holds a 100-per cent participating interest in the Mannar block. The Mannar basin is an under-explored frontier basin, with both structural and strati-graphic plays.
Cairn Lanka has mobilised the fifth-generation Japanese drillship 'Chikyu' and started drilling three exploratory wells in the SL 2007-01-001 block on 13 August 2011 as scheduled. The block is likely to start commercial production by 2014.
The Sri Lanka's exploration drilling project is the company's maiden overseas project.
Cairn Lanka acquired 3D seismic data for 1,750km and 1,450 km in the Mannar Basin in Sri Lanka between December 2009 and January 2010.