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Explorers 2011: Savant plans another year at Badami Looks to drill up to three sidetracks and possibly exploration well in Red Wolf prospect 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, and could also drill another Red Wolf exploration well, depending on rig availability.
The goal is to increase production at the eastern North Slope field by bringing new technology to bear on the 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.
Stimulation, fracturing 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.
Red Wolf requires rig 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. “We would like to drill the well this winter but as you know rigs are tight. We are working multiple fronts with respect to securing a rig,” Vigil told Petroleum News in an email Sept. 26.
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 older 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.
From Kupcake to Badami Savant picked up leases in Foggy Island Bay some 20 miles west of Badami in 2006 and drilled an exploration well from an ice island into the Kupcake oil prospect in early 2008.
The Kupcake No. 1 well failed to uncover hydrocarbon resources worth pursuing. A partner on the program said the target interval in the Kemik formation “was thinner than anticipated” and the porous Cretaceous sandstone proved to be “water wet,” meaning that the porous sandstone rocks in the reservoir tended to absorb water more easily than oil.
Savant re-emerged at Badami in 2008, taking on an even more formidable challenge.
The turbidite formation at Badami is a series of channels, like fingers on a hand. The trouble has been getting them to “communicate” so that oil moves from one to the next.
When BP began developing Badami in the late 1990s, it expected the field to produce 30,000 to 35,000 barrels of oil per day, but the first wells proved to be disappointing.
Facing a low total production rate of 2,500 bpd, BP suspended production at Badami from February to May 1999. BP suspended production again in 2003 after daily production dropped to 1,350 bpd and kept the field offline until 2005, when it planned to use horizontal drilling techniques to tap oil from the many reservoir compartments.
In September 2007 the field was taken off line once again due to low production rates.
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