Offshore staff
LONDON – Independent Oil and Gas has provided an update on drilling progress on the Elgood well 48/22c-7, the company’s first well for its Phase 1 Core project in the UK southern North Sea.
The jackup Noble Hans Deul drilled the well horizontally through the reservoir section to a TD of 15,472 ft (4,716 m) MD, intersecting 1,080 ft (329 m) of good-quality Permian Leman sandstone reservoir.
Test rates reached a maximum of 57.8 MMcf/d of gas and 959 b/d of condensate through an 80/64-in. choke, constrained by surface facilities on the rig.
Elgood is under development as a single-well subsea tieback, via a 6-in. pipeline laid late last year, to the platform at the Blythe field, also being developed by a single well. The subsea tree will be controlled via the umbilical which is due to be installed over the next few weeks.
IOG admitted there has been various mechanical issues with the Elgood well which has taken longer to drill than expected, but these have been resolved via the collaboration with well operator Petrofac and its drilling contractors Noble Corp. and Schlumberger.
Having determined the causes of these issues the team is putting in place protocols and procedures to limit the occurrence of similar mechanical issues in subsequent wells.
The Noble Hans Deul should transfer shortly to drill the Blythe field development well through the Blythe platform, before moving on to Southwark. The Blythe well should be completed by October, followed by Phase 1 first gas later in 4Q.
Preliminary integration of the Elgood well data, prior to the well test, indicated that recoverable gas range may be below pre-well estimates, although this will require further modeling and analysis of several months of production to confirm.
In the meantime, in light of the higher than expected clean-up flow rates combined with the high forward gas pricing environment for the coming year, management believes that near-term Elgood cashflows are likely to exceed the company’s planning base case.
07/19/2021
