Bogota, Colombia – Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY – news) has stopped drilling at its Siriri field in Colombia and is considering the future of the project after finding gas and condensates but no oil, a company official said on Friday. Occidental still considered an oil discovery in the Siriri site – up until now the company’s biggest hope for a new major discovery in Colombia – to be “possible”, a spokesman said. But the highly complicated geological structure and security concerns would both be factors in the company’s decision on whether or not to resume test drilling. Drilling would not resume for at least one year, he said, adding that more seismic studies would probably be needed first. The Siriri field is located near the Venezuelan border in the 47,000-hectare Gibraltar Basin, about 140 km from Occidental’s existing Cano Limon field in eastern Colombia. Exploration at Siriri started in February 2000 and its possible reserves were first estimated by the company at 1.4 billion barrels. At the time test drilling began, Occidental rated the chances of discovering a commercially viable oil deposit at Siriri to be about 20 percent.
Occidental Finds No Oil at Colombian Siriri Well
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