Offshore staff
(Black Sea, Turkey) - Toreador Resources Corp. and its partners, Stratic Energy Corp. and TPAO, the Turkish national oil company, score success with their Dogu Ayazli-1 exploratory well in the Black Sea.
Testing of the well has confirmed the presence of commercial quantities of natural gas in a new location to the east of the Ayazli structure, which was discovered by Toreador and its partners in 2004.
The Dogu-Ayazli-1 will be completed as a gas producer.
Wireline logs from the well indicate gas in 12 pay zones which cumulatively total over 60 m (197 ft) thickness between 755 m and 1,080 m depth.
The pay zones in this new discovery show a close correlation with the sands in the existing Ayazli discovery but are thicker.
Two of the deeper sands, between 1,052 m and 1,080 m depth with a cumulative thickness of 10 m (33 ft), were tested, with an initial production rate of approximately 7.3 MMcf/d of dry gas on a 32/64-in. choke, at a flowing wellhead pressure of approximately 1,150 psi.
Following standard industry practice, the company expects ultimately to perforate approximately 42 m of additional gas producing zones for cumulative net pay of over 52 m (171 ft).
"The Dogu Ayazli-1 exploratory well, whose results have substantially exceeded our expectations, proves that significant additional natural gas accumulations can be found along the Ayazli-Akkaya trend," says G. Thomas Graves III, Toreador president and CEO.
"This new discovery, which was drilled approximately two miles east from our Ayazli-1 well, tested a large seismic anomaly on trend and contiguous with the Ayazli structure and has increased our exploration team's confidence in its finding tools and analytical methods in this sub-basin."
The new well and the partnership's previously successful exploratory and development wells will be dual completed and brought on-line in the first phase of production from the South Akcakoca Sub-basin in the second half of this year.
Construction of the transportation infrastructure necessary to deliver the gas to the Turkish national grid is continuing on schedule.
The Dogu Ayazli (or East Ayazli) feature is a broad, flat anticlinal structure located to the east of, and deeper than, the Ayazli structure along the same fault trend.
As operator of the well, Toreador has a 36.75% working interest, TPAO is the owner of a 51% working interest and Stratic has a 12.25% working interest.
The next well planned, the Dogu Ayazli-2, will be a directional delineation well drilled to the northwest of the Dogu Ayazli-1.
Drilling of the delineation well will begin as soon as the rig has completed operations on the current well.
The South Akcakoca sub-basin represents approximately 50,000 acres out of the partnership's 964,000-acre Western Black Sea permit area, or approximately 5% of the total area.
In September 2004, Toreador and its partners drilled the Ayazli-1 exploratory well, which discovered natural gas.
02/24/06
