Hong Kong-listed independent UEG said on 19 June that it has completed the drilling of a new appraisal well at Iraq’s Block 9. The FH-A1 well, which spudded in October, is more than 15km southwest of UEG’s Faihaa oilfield, where production hit 75,000 b/d in May. The firm says the well has tapped a “significant new discovery” which tested at 3,000 b/d from an oil layer found in the cretaceous Zubair sandstone formation. It plans to continue to conduct regional geological reservoir studies this year. The Zubair formation is the ‘main pay’ zone in Iraq’s Basra oil heartland, typically producing medium crudes with relatively high sulfur content.