The Shaikan block is situated about 85 km to the north-west of Erbil covering an area of 283 km². The Production Sharing Contract (“PSC”) for the Shaikan block was awarded in November 2007 to Gulf Keystone Petroleum International (Operator with the working interest of 75%), Kalegran Ltd. (100% subsidiary of MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Plc. with 20%) and Texas Keystone Inc. (5%)1.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has an option to nominate a third party interest of up to 15% in the Shaikan PSC and a further option to nominate a government interest of up to 20% following a commercial discovery.
On 27 April 2009 the Company spudded its first exploration well, Shaikan-1 and on 6 August 2009 it was announced that the Company had made a significant discovery. Following completion of the successful appraisal of the field, Shaikan was declared a commercial discovery in August 2012.
In 2010, acquisition of 599 km² of 3D seismic data was completed over the Shaikan block with the data having been processed in 2011.
Work on the Shaikan Field Development Plan is currently underway to move from the large-scale stage development of this world-class discovery of 13.7 billion billion barrels of gross mean oil-in-place.
Initial, independently audited, Shaikan gross oil-in-place volumes, announced in January 2010, have been followed by several significant upward revisions, the most recent being announced in July 2012. Click here to access a summary of the Shaikan discovery gross oil-in-place volumes
1Held in trust for GKPI
