You might easily have missed the Ukrainian mini bid round, of 4 blocks, said to be the prelude to a much larger offering later this year. It was published on Ukraine’s Geological Service website on June 14th, but as it appears only in Ukrainian, most of us passed it by, see
The deadline for bid submissions is 28th August 2018 and there are considerable bureaucratic hurdles to be surmounted before then. We were alerted to the round’s existence when Ukranafta, the majority state owned oil company, released a call, which is at least in English, for investors to form “an exploration JV” with them.
https://www.ukrnafta.com/en/expression-of-interest-for-exploration-jv-with-ukrnafta
There is very little useful information in the bid documents linked to the bid announcement, but at least they revealed the block coordinates. You can download these from our website, here
http://data.lynxinfo.co.uk/LicensingRounds/#zoom=6&lat=-73917.42711&lon=1661713.24011&layers=00BTTT
That’s enough links! Three of the blocks are in West Ukraine in the Carpathian region (Lviv Oblast) and the fourth in the Dnepr Donetsk basin. We can speculate a little about them from what we already know, from our extensive Ukraine database.
- Lipovetska block is adjacent to the Polish border in the outer zone of the Carpathian foredeep and covers Khokhanivke oil field and the northern part of the Svydyntsa gas field.
Svydyntsa is the Ukrainian continuation of the Lyubachiv fold in Poland. Discovered in 1954, production started in 1964 and the gas field was 89% depleted by 1993, having produced about 6bcm of gas. Production in that year was about 88mmcm. Producing horizons are shallow, stacked Sarmatian sands, with depths in the range 200m to 900m subsurface. In 2012, UGV reported that production was still about 80mcm/year, with average production of 6.6 mcm/day from 39 producing wells. There is likely to be a wealth of information available about this field, where production has been going on for over 50 years.
The Kokhanivka structure lies beneath Svydyntsa, 1.5km to the NE of its crest. Heavy oil was discovered in Upper Jurassic carbonates at a depth of 1117mand during extended testing over the period 1957 to 1994, some 38000 tons of oil were produced by the time production declined to just 1.4 t/day. Original reserves were estimated at about 1 million tons.
Ukranafta’s current production licence expires at the end of 2018**.
- The Yavоrivska block is to the south east of Lipovetska, in the outer flysch zone. No hydrocarbon production has been reported from this block, which is to the East of the main trend of biogenic gas production. Depth to base tertiary is only about 200m (below datum), with possibilities for oil in Jurassic carbonates. Further research reveals that:
A seismic survey was shot in 1980-81, 37 lines at a spacing of 0.8 to3.5km, covering an area of 800 sq.km. In 1983 well Yavorivskiy-1 was drilled to TD 2187m, presumably targeting Jurassic carbonates.
- The Chernitska block is over the northern part of the Ugersk gas field, which was discovered in 1944, and produced from Tertiary (Helvetian – Sarmatian) sandstones at a depth of about 200 to 800m (drilled depth), extending into middle Cretaceous sands beneath the base Tertiary unconformity. The field is now largely depleted, and was reported as producing about 0.9 bcm/year of gas in the late 90s.The Ugersk production licence apparently expired in March 2014. There is a current gas storage licence for the Bilche-Volitsa-Ugersk area.
- The Surmachivska block, probably an oil /gas / condensate prospect, is in the north west part of the Dnepr Donetsk Basin (Sumska oblast), sandwiched between the Kampanska (production licensed to 2019**) and Andriyashivska fields (licence expired March 2018, not renewed**), which produce from the prolific Tournaisian and Visean sands of this region. This stuff is deep, 4700-5200m and complicated by faulting, so we can only surmise that there may be something of interest on seismic data acquired in this area. Andriyashivska аrеа was the subject of seismic surveys in 1961, 1973-74 and in 1982-84 when about 79 profiles were shot, which presumably included the Kampanska block. According to the Ukraine Atlas of Oil and Gas Fields (1994) the lower, Tournaisian horizons were not produced and there is scant evidence of further exploration at this level.
It’s odd that the Surmachivska block is so small, less than 2sq km, over a structural low. Logically, it would be more attractive if it included the open (expired) Andriyashivska block to the south.
Lynx has a large database of Ukraine oil and gas information, which underpins our “Advisers” for the Carpathians, Dnepr Donets basin and Black Sea shelf regions. These provide a wealth of information including structure maps, regional and local cross sections along with a field, reservoir and well database, for better evaluation of these prospects.
For more details, contact Charlie Hewlett on chas@lynxinfo.co.uk
**As far as we can tell. Every effort has been made to check the information given above, but as with so many things Ukrainian, we cannot guarantee its veracity.