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Aiming to increase Badami production Savant preparing for another year of development work at the easternmost producing field on the North Slope of Alaska Eric Lidji For Petroleum News
Savant Alaska LLC plans to continue its attack on production problems at the Badami unit this coming year by drilling as many as three coil tubing sidetracks on existing wells into the Badami sands.
The goal is to increase output at the eastern North Slope field by bringing new technology to bear on a complex geology of the reservoir. After three years of renewed operations, Badami is producing 1,300 barrels of oil per day for the year, according to Savant Alaska President Greg Vigil. “We just want to increase production, period,” Vigil told Petroleum News on Sept. 21. “We don’t have a production target, if you will.”
Unit operator BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. brought the local subsidiary of Denver-based independent Savant Resources LLC on as a partner at Badami in mid-2008 in the hopes of re-starting and ultimately sustaining production at the troubled field using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. ASRC Exploration is a minority partner on the project.
Under a ninth plan of development submitted to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources in late August, BP proposed work on four existing development wells, as detailed plans for an future exploratory well. That plan is still awaiting approval.
Proposed workload for Savant Savant would be the company to do that work.
The plan calls for Savant to stimulate the B1-18A well to “determine the economic viability of additional application of stimulated horizontal well construction in the Badami Sands interval.” Savant would use coiled tubing frac technology, propellant frac technology or hydraulic fracture treatment technology to stimulate the well.
Savant drilled the B1-18 sidetrack in 2010 into younger and shallower Brookian rocks.
The plan also calls for Savant to use hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the B1-38 well in order to evaluate the impact on productivity and reserves, and to gather information about a reservoir in the Killian sands targeted in a previous seismic survey. That work could lead to future horizontal wells and a participating area for the Killian Sands Pool.
Savant drilled B1-38 into the Red Wolf prospect in early 2010 and found oil in two horizons. The first was the deeper Kekiktuk formation that also contains the oil reservoir for the Endicott field to the west. The second was the shallower late Cretaceous Killian sands that Savant used when it brought Badami back online in September 2010.
Savant attempted to hydraulically fracture that well this year, but Vigil said the operation wasn’t successful because of issues related to pressure limitations at the wellhead. The company did not perform a planned hydraulic fracturing operation on the B1-18 well because it needed “some different technology on the Slope” before it could continue.
Exploratory well in plan The plan also calls for Savant to drill an exploratory well from a “remote ice pad to the crest of the Red Wolf (Kekiktuk) prospect,” subject to rig availability.
The plan calls for Savant to sidetrack the B1-16 and B1-28 wells using a coiled tubing drilling rig to further evaluate the impact of horizontal drilling on the Badami Sands.
B1-16 and B1-28 are existing wells at the Badami unit.
Finally, the plan calls for Savant to continue producing at all wells currently online, and to continue using a chemical paraffin inhibitor program implemented over the past year to improve productivity and reduce operating expenditures by keeping wells online.
The ninth plan of development would run from Nov. 15, 2011, to Nov. 15, 2013.
Over the period covered by the eighth plan of development — Nov. 15, 2010 to Nov. 15, 2011 — Savant produced from the B1-18A, B1-38 and B1-36 wells, but abandoned plans to convert the B1-21 production well into a gas injection well and later shut-in the well.
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