In Cuba, the government continues to be very supportive of the Company’s plans: while working on our field development plan the Company identified oil storage constraints and the government responded proactively with an offer of access to government-owned oil tank storage infrastructure at the supertanker port at Matanzas, a very welcome development. The Company continues to work hard on several fronts, including talking to providers of new funding and finalising plans and commercial agreements for oil trucking, storage, shipping and sales to make the plan of bringing first oil to world markets by mid FY2025 a reality. Upper Sheet Development all systems go Alameda-2 was spudded in June 2023 and reached total depth on 3 July 2023. The well was drilled ahead of time and within budget and had no significant complications or HSE issues. The well was focused on logging, coring and flow testing the Amistad Units-1A, 1B, 2 & 3 units with the following results: – The Amistad Unit 1A test recovered 40 barrels of 12° API oil with 3,783 cP viscosity at surface; – Moveable oil of a similar quality to Amistad Unit 1A was confirmed in Unit 3 and testing indicated the potential to flow at about 750 bopd; – The Amistad Unit 2 test did not demonstrate moveable hydrocarbons to surface at the location tested; – The Amistad Unit 1B test recovered 19° API oil with 30 cP viscosity at surface from a perforated section of less than 20% of the total Net Pay for Unit 1B (when incorporating fractures); and – Stabilised unassisted flow to surface was measured at 1,235 barrels of oil per day, peaking at 1,903 barrels of oil per day. An EPT was then conducted. Production was run for a total of 10 days, with 20 tanker loads of oil produced and delivered to offsite storage, successfully testing export logistics. Flow peaked at 1,183 barrels of oil per day but averaged 300 barrels of oil per day, significantly less than the stabilised flow in the original test. Analysis of the EPT results suggests the reservoir formation was damaged, possibly during completion operations: at press, the Company is planning a workover program aimed at restoring the higher flow rates observed during the original test. The Amistad Unit 1B section was completed for future production, whilst Amistad Units 1A and 3 were suspended for potential future development and production. The Company’s independent resource certifiers updated the Amistad Units 1B and Unit 1A resource certification to 46 million barrels (2C) and 90 million barrels (2U) for Amistad Unit 1B and 32 million barrels (2U) for Amistad Unit 1A. The Company is now focussed on near-term commercialisation of the Amistad Unit 1B discovery. The proposed phased development plan is for a series of new Amistad Unit 1B production wells to be drilled based on existing 2D seismic to develop the 1C resource (16 million barrels) with subsequent development wells to be located via new 3D seismic. A complete assay of Amistad Unit 1B oil confirmed that the oil has API gravity of 19.8° and sulphur content of <3% and has been proven to be attractive to international oil refineries. Production is initially planned to be delivered by truck to the Matanzas Supertanker port, located a short distance from Block 9, where it will be stored in a dedicated tank awaiting export via ship. 07 Melbana Energy Limited Annual Report 2024
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