B.C. shales yield ‘very high’ reserves
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Shares of Questerre Energy have tripled in value this year as the Canadian junior explorer and its partner Transeuro Energy have started probing deeper shales in the Liard basin of northeastern British Columbia and edging towards commercial development.
The Mississippian age shales are about 60 miles east of the Horn River play, the focal point of a land rush this year.
Questerre posted a 21 percent hike to the equivalent of C$2.87 per share in trading on the Oslo exchange in Norway, while Vancouver-based Transeuro gained 28 percent, boosting its market value at C$78 million.
The companies said the “very high” gas reserves and “promising” production from two earlier wells in the basin make the latest tests “very interesting.”
They said expertise gained from their joint efforts in the Quebec shale play have allowed them to develop a “predictive model which allows us to better target our completions to productive shales.”
Well being re-entered The current operation involves a re-entry of the A5 well. Three intervals will be perforated and minor stimulations will be conducted to evaluate reservoir and rock mechanical properties prior to an inflow test.
The gross thickness of these prospective deeper shales confirmed with good gas shows is greater than 1,600 feet.
According to the companies, the tests will help identify the net productive reservoir intervals. If the results are promising, a full stimulation will be carried out in a future operation to test for commercial flow rates.
Questerre has operated two producing tight gas-shale wells for more than two years with relatively low decline rates. The companies each have 50 percent ownership of those wells.
Compression was recently added to one of the wells with promising initial results as production rose to more than 4 million cubic feet per day, close to the original peak of 4.5 million cubic feet per day.
They say the continued good production of the shallower wells together with recent work indicate there is also strong potential for the deeper Devonian shales.
Gas in place for the Mississippian siltstone-shale sequence is confirmed at more than 1 trillion cubic feet per section (discovered resource) based in an independent evaluation by Nederland, Sewel & Associates.
Transeuro has a 50 percent interest in 20,400 acres with takeaway capacity in place.
Questerre President Michael Binnion said the “very high gas-in-place numbers and promising production results from our two wells in the Liard shales makes this test very interesting.”
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