At 8am (WST) yesterday morning, Labeidna-1 had been drilled to a depth of 2,198 metres, with preparations underway to set casing before drilling ahead to the planned total depth of 3,095 metres.

Spudded in 1,266 metres of water, Labeidna-1 is 15km southwest of the Chinguetti field and will target a Miocene-aged reservoir objective, Woodside said.

The Tevet-2 sidetrack was plugged and abandoned as planned, after completed wireline logging established the exploration well had intersected a six-metre gross oil column.

Two weeks ago, Woodside said the column was small and might not prove to be material, but the result was encouraging for future offshore Mauritanian Cretaceous exploration targets.

Joint venture partners interests in PSC-B are: Woodside (53.8%), Hardman (21.6%), BG (11.6%) Premier (9.2%) and Roc Oil (3.7%).