Gulf Keystone Petroleum

Gulf Keystone Petroleum Limited

Type	Public limited company
Traded as	:
Industry	Oil and gas industry
Founded	2001
Headquarters	London, England Hamilton, Bermuda
Number of locations	Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Key people	Jón Ferrier (CEO)
Services	Oil exploration and production
Number of employees	Over 600
Website	www.gulfkeystone.com

Gulf Keystone Petroleum Limited (: , OTCQX: ) is an oil and gas exploration and production company operating in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. It is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. The company is registered in Bermuda with branch offices in Arbil, Kurdistan, Algiers, Algeria, and London, UK. Through its subsidiary, Gulf Keystone Petroleum International, the company owns production sharing contracts for four exploration blocks in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Shaikan is an oilfield in Northern Iraq, in which Gulf Keystone Petroleum currently holds 75% of a production sharing agreement with the Kurdish Regional Government. It is notably one of the largest Super Giant oilfields discovered in the last 50 years.

Shaikan was declared a commercial discovery on August 1, 2012 following a five-well appraisal program. Initially independent estimates place the gross oil-in-place (OIP) volume at 13.7 billion barrels (P50) potentially making it one of the largest oilfields discovered in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The oilfield covers an area of some 130 to 150 square kilometres (50 to 58 sq mi), and comprises a series of limestone reservoirs stacked upon each other. These reservoirs encompass a very long period of geological time, from the Cretaceous which ended some 65 million years ago to the Triassic, which began some 248 million years ago. Gulf Keystone believe that hydrocarbons may also exist in the more ancient Permian formation.

An audit of the Shaikan oilfield published in March 2014 appeared to show that dramatically less oil could be recovered than had been previously advised and expected. The audit implied a recovery of only 12% of the oil in the Shaikan reservoir and indicated that Shaikan contained just 9.215 billion barrels (1.4651×10^⁹ m³) of which just 545 million barrels (86.6×10^⁶ m³) could hope to be recovered net to Gulf Keystone This appeared to be significantly less than the 13.7 billion barrels (2.18×10^⁹ m³) previously claimed by Gulf Keystone Petroleum to be in place in the field. This apparently low recovery level was partly a presentation issue, because elsewhere the audit expressed the opinion that the recovery could be some 20%. As a direct consequence of the perceived negative audit the share price of Gulf Keystone Petroleum crashed by 40% in the days following the publication of this official audit. This audit was reviewed between June and September 2015 in order to take account of additional well and substantial production data. This resulted in the Proved and Probable Reserves increasing by 114%, from 299 million to 639 million barrels. The Proved, Probable and Possible Reserves rose by 152%, from 389 million to 982 million barrels.