'The rig arrived in Tunisia in mid April and has been moved into position at Hasdrubal Southwest where it is scheduled to drill an appraisal well,' Peter Haynes, president of the BG Group in Tunisia, told MEED on 30 April. 'The results of this will tell us whether the Hasdrubal field has additional reserve potential, and we will take appropriate development decisions depending on the information we receive.'

The company has already drilled four appraisal wells at Hasdrubal, discovering recoverable sales volumes of approximately 260,000 million cubic feet of gas and 25 million barrels of condensate. The precise timing of the development of Hasdrubal, located 106 kilometres offshore in the Gulf of Gabes, has not yet been set, but Haynes says the field will come on stream at an appropriate time to coincide with the projected increase in local gas demand. BG expects to start on the front-end engineering and design (FEED) process next year.

'Having drilled the Hasdrubal Southwest appraisal well, the rig will then be moved north to Miskar, where three in-fill wells will be drilled in June-July,' says Haynes. 'This will enable us to maintain the field's plateau production level of around 200 million cubic feet a day for a further three years.' BG has spent some $650 million in capital investment on the field to date.

BG is in the closing stages of evaluating 3-D seismic data shot last year over the Jugurtha field, which, like Miskar and Hasdrubal, is in the offshore Amilcar permit. Haynes says BG proposes drilling a second well at the field at the end of this year to assist in evaluating the feasibility of developing the low-quality gas discovery.