Non Commercial Gas at Kercem Oil Well

Production tests conducted on the well Madonna Taz-Zejt at Kercem flowed non-commercial gas for a brief duration on Friday, 12 March 1999. The registered flow-rate is considered insufficient to justify completion of the well for production.

The possibility of increasing the flow-rate by various subsurface interventions is presently being considered. For this purpose, production logging tools were lowered in the well to understand better the production characteristics of the reservoir. The information recorded in the course of this logging was sent abroad for analysis at two international research laboratories.

The stratigraphic well has so far established the presence of a petroleum system in Gozo and has considerably increased the petroleum potential of the Maltese Islands. It was spudded on 18 June 1998 and drilling was completed at 8,012 m on 4 February 1999.

The well is the first and only one ever drilled by the Government. Another 12 wells, all dry, were drilled by oil companies under licences between 1958 and 1993. The only other onshore well, Naxxar 2 drilled in 1958 by BP in response to the discovery of oil in SE-Sicily in 1956, was bottomed at 3,000 m.

Originally projected to reach a total depth of 5,000 m, the trace presence of bitumen encouraged the Government to drill the well deeper. Further shows, this time of wet gas at 5,180 m, advocated the eventual gas find in fractured dolomites. Unless a significant increase in flow-rate is achieved in the course of these production tests, the well will however be abandoned as a non-commercial find.