Tower Resources Cameroon S.A, has signed a contract with Vantage Drilling International (“Vantage”) for the Topaz Driller jack-up rig (“Topaz Driller”) to provide drilling operations for the NJOM-3 well which is planned for Tower’s 100% owned and operated Thali licence, offshore Cameroon, in Q2 2019.

The Topaz Driller is a Baker Marine Pacific Class 375 jack-up, which was recently mobilised to Cameroon by NewAge as operator for the Etinde license for two appraisal wells and is currently employed in Gabon.

As announced on 1 November 2018, the terms of the contract are confidential, however, the economics are consistent with Tower’s current drilling cost estimates.

The NJOM-3 well will be targeting gross mean contingent (2C) resources of 18 million barrels across the Njonji-1 and Njonji-2 fault blocks located in the south of the Thali licence with an EMV10 of US$118 million, as identified by the recent Oilfield International Limited (“OIL”) Reserves Report announced on the 1 November 2018. Furthermore, the NJOM-3 well is expected to de-risk an additional 20 million barrels of gross mean prospective resources across Njonji South and Njonji South-West.

The objectives of the NJOM-3 well are to test the thickness of reservoirs already identified by NJOM-1 and also to test for other reservoirs which may be present at the new location. It will also provide key flow-rate data for the Njonji reservoirs from a drill stem test (“DST”), which would allow reclassification of contingent resources into 2P reserves as well as providing critical reservoir characterisation data for the potential field development strategy.

Jeremy Asher, Chairman and CEO commented:
“We are very pleased to have secured the Topaz Driller, the same rig which our well management team at Bedrock Drilling used to drill the two recent Etinde wells. We see the NJOM-3 well, in Q2 2019, as just the beginning of our drilling activity on the Thali license, as we explained in our Corporate Presentation of last month. The rig timing remains consistent with that schedule, including its target of first oil by the end of 2019.”