Frontera offers details on plan for development of Taribana field

Houston-based Frontera Resources said on July 3 that it hoped to extract a total of 230 mm barrels of crude oil from the Taribana deposit in Georgia over the next 25 years.
Output from the field, which is located in eastern Georgia, is expected to peak at the level of 30,000-40,000 bpd. Frontera said it planned to carry out a three-stage program for the development of Taribana. The first stage will run through the end of 2006 and entail the drilling of 60 new wells. The second stage will run from 2007 to 2014 and entail the drilling of 40 wells. The third will run from 2015 to 2025 and entail the drilling of 25 wells.

Frontera and its partner Saknavtobi, Georgia's state oil company, began sinking the first well at Taribana on October 30, 1999. They finished drilling the shaft down to a depth of 3,100 metres on April 1 of this year and began commercial production shortly thereafter. Frontera will cover all of the costs of the project; it has already invested around $ 30 mm in Taribana and hopes to borrow another $ 60 mm from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The US firm is entitled to 30% of all revenues from the project, while Saknavtobi will keep 70%. Frontera is developing a number of fields in the Kura basin in eastern Georgia and is also working at nearby concessions in western Azerbaijan.