By Mohammed Jetutu
Cairn has announced a drill stem test (DST) result of eight thousand barrels of oil per day (BOPD) over a 12 metre interval in SNE2, its first appraisal of the first of its two recent discoveries offshore Senegal.
The company also flowed 1,000BOPD over a 15 metre column, of which about 4 metres is net sand. The well is now being plugged and abandoned.
The SNE- 2 well is located in 1,200m water depth in the deep-water Sangomar block. It reached the planned total depth (TD) of 2,800m True Vertical Depth subsea (TVDss). It appraised the SNE-1, the 2014 discovery located some 3 km to the south.
“Following this first successful appraisal well, resource estimates for the SNE field will be fully revised and announced after the results of the further appraisal activity”, Cairn said in a statement. Evaluation of the extensive dataset collected is continuing, with preliminary analysis focused on the DST and below are highlights of the preliminary results:
- DST over a 12 metre (m) interval of high quality pay flowed at a maximum stabilised, but constrained rate of ~8,000BOPD on a 48/64” choke, confirming the high deliverability of the principal reservoir unit in the SNE-2
- DST over a 15m interval (~3.5m net) of relatively low quality “heterolithic” pay flowed at a maximum rate of ~1,000BOPD on a 24/64” choke, confirming that these reservoirs are able to produce at viable rates and thus make a material contribution to resource volumes. Flow was unstable due to the 4.5” DST tubing
- Multiple samples of oil and gas recovered to surface from wireline logs and drill stem tests
- Confirmation of correlation of the principle reservoir units between SNE-1 and SNE-2 with the primary reservoirs occurring in the gas cap as predicted
- 216m of continuous core taken across the entire reservoir interval with 100% recovery
- Similar oil-down-to and oil–up-to depths seen in SNE-1 – 103m gross (95m in SNE-1)
- Pressure, log and seismic data indicate that the hydrocarbon column contains limited segregated reservoir-seal pairs within a continuous connected pressure regime
- Initial indications confirm the same 32 degree API oil quality as seen in SNE-1
