Cairn picks Sabbath day for oil drilling

Cairn India has picked Sunday 14 August as the date for commencement of oil drilling, also known in industry parlance as “spud” date.

The Sunday date was disclosed by Cairn Lanka CEO Terrence Sundaram at an awareness meeting with fishermen in Kalpitiya on Wednesday. This announcement however is contradictory to Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s statement over the weekend that drilling commenced on Saturday as per a report filed by Xinhua.

In its official statements Cairn India has only suggested that frontier exploration drilling in the SL 2007-01-001 block off the coast of Sri Lanka is expected to commence in August 2011.

It has contracted a Japanese fifth-generation and technically advanced drill ship to drill the three wells in the Gulf of Mannar.

In July the Government and Cairn India revised the three-well programme as an alternative to the one specified in the Petroleum Resource Agreement between the two parties.

The proposal recommended revising the committed drilling depth of each well to reflect the optimal programme based on the detailed technical evaluation of the 1,750 km2 3D seismic data acquired in 2010, whilst also continuing to meet the overall commitment.