Dubai, Oct 14 (IANS/WAM): Dubai Petroleum Establishment (DPE), owned 100 percent by the Dubai government and responsible for Dubai's offshore oil and gas development and production, has identified significant volumes of gas in its T-02 deep gas exploration well.

The high pressure and high temperature T-02 well was drilled to 18,248 feet into the Pre Khuff formation and is the deepest well in Dubai to date.

The well is in the offshore Fateh field where oil and gas was first discovered at depths of around 10,000 feet in 1966.

While drilling in the Pre Khuff formation, gas flowed into the T-02 well bore on a number of occasions. Current indications are that the gas is largely methane with no H2S content.

An earlier well, T-01, was drilled into the Khuff formation in 1981 to a depth of 17,397 feet but test results indicated that significant levels of H2S and nitrogen were present which made gas production and treatment difficult and expensive in an offshore environment.

The new well has been wireline logged to evaluate the potential of the formations and there are some 390 feet of gas rich zones out of the 900 feet drilled and logged in the Pre Khuff.

The well is currently being suspended to allow for later re-entry, stimulation and long term production testing. Until the testing programme has been completed, potential reserves and possible production rates cannot be estimated accurately.

The planned production testing procedures require the use of specialist items and equipment that have long lead times of delivery.

DPE expects to have the test results in the late summer of 2015.