The Graben discovery sits in the Karlsruhe-Leopoldshafen licence in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Rhein Petroleum is operator with a 60% interest.

The Graben asset is a faulted structure, bounded to the south by an E-W fault and to the east and west by normal faults splaying northwards from this fault that divide the field into two N-S fault blocks dip-closed to the north. The structure was originally mapped and drilled in the 1950s on poor quality 2D seismic where the structure was poorly defined. It is now covered with a modern 3D data set and is much better imaged.

The Graben Field was discovered in 1959 and produced from 2 wells until the field was decommissioned in 1963. The subsequent 3D seismic data demonstrates a significant remaining attic oil up-dip of these wells. In addition, modern petrophysical analysis of these legacy wells demonstrates significant bypass pay. The independent CPR (SGS 2022) has assigned 2C gross contingent resources in Graben East up-dip of the Graben-1 production well of 3.2 mmbbls for this attic oil and bypass pay. In addition, the CPR describes 2U gross prospective resources in Graben Central & West in 3 distinct reservoirs up-dip from the Graben-2 production well of 5.7 mmbbls.

The expectation is that the development programme will be funded from Erfelden cash flows and Partner participation.