U.K. independent Melrose Resources has gas and water in the Black Sea offshore Bulgaria, where oil province potential is seen where the Danube River has long emptied.

The Ropotamo 1 well flowed to 40,000 cubic feet per day of gas but aslo 2,200 barrels per day of water. Gas flowed without water from a 47-metre interval up to 797 m down. The semi-submersible drilling rig Atwood Southern Cross also found “thin interbedded clastics and porous dolomites” in lower Pliocene and Miocene rock to 825 m.

Eocene sandstones were targeted, however, and they were “water wet” with traces of “dead oil”. Roptomo 1 was the higheste risk well Melrose was drilling in the area, and the rig will now move to the Obzor No.1 well in Block Kaliakra 99, 65 km south-east of the city of Varna in water 650 m deep.

Obzor No.1 targets 158 billion cubic feet of gas in Pliocene strata “defined by large amplitude and AVO anomalies”.

“We now move to the Obzor prospect which is the closest of our prospects to the Galata field and to the hydrocarbon-bearing channels which we have encountered in previous drilling,” company chair, Robert Adair, said in a statement.