|
Pioneer gets partial Torok PA expansion State approves expansion around drainage area of existing well, but denies expansion over an additional lease in the area Eric Lidji For Petroleum News
Following a development well drilled this past fall, the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas has approved a partial expansion of the Torok participating area in the Oooguruk unit.
The expansion adds 760 acres to the southeast corner of the participating area in the offshore unit northwest of the Kuparuk River unit, in the waters of Harrison Bay.
Operator Pioneer Natural Resources Alaska Inc. had originally asked the state to add 1,320 acres from portions of two leases to the participating area, but because the company did not propose additional development wells in the broader expansion area, Division of Oil and Gas Director Bill Barron limited the expansion to the drainage area of the ODST-47 development well Pioneer drilled in October 2012, some 760 acres of ADL 355038.
The state formed the Torok participating area in June 2011, retroactive to March 2010, the approximate date that the ODSN-45A well began producing from the Torok reservoir.
The well was a horizontal lateral of an earlier well, ODSN-45, that Pioneer had originally drilled into the deeper Nuiqsut formation, but plugged back to the Torok because of “operational difficulties.” In January 2012, Pioneer drilled ODST-39, a second producing well, in the participating area, and in October it drilled ODST-47 southeast of the prior participating area boundaries, although it had not brought the well into production by the start of this year. (The company also drilled an injection well, ODST-46, in March 2011.)
Nuna drilled in 2012 In early 2012, Pioneer also drilled the Nuna No. 1 exploration from on onshore pad to an offshore target beneath ADL 355038, but outside of the expanded participating area. The well produced some 27,654 barrels of oil over 19 days during a flow test in April 2012, or some 1,455 barrels per day. Pioneer subsequently suspended the well, but this winter the company is drilling NDST-02, or Nuna No. 2, an appraisal well to the same target.
Under its current development scheme, Pioneer is developing the Torok reservoir with 26 horizontal wells — 13 production wells and 13 injection wells — spaced 1,500 feet apart.
Through January 2013, the Torok participating area had produced 521,419 barrels of oil and some 860 million cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Division of Oil and Gas.
Pioneer has previously estimated that the Torok holds some 690 million barrels of original oil in place and said it expects to be able to recover as much as 25 percent using primary and enhanced recovery techniques.
Workovers coming Under a plan of development for the expansion, Pioneer proposed several activities, including enhanced recovery operations from ODST-46 started in 2012, drilling ODST-47 in 2012, fracture stimulating ODST-47 in early 2013, evaluating the ODST-46 injection well and performing workovers on the ODST-45A and ODST-39 producers.
Although Pioneer said it might undertake additional work, it said it would be “contingent on the results of the current plan and well slot availability,” but because the plan “does not propose development of the proposed expansion area beyond the one well currently in place,” as Barron put it in his ruling, the state only partially approved the expansion.
The wells with the most information about the Torok reservoir include Sinclair’s Colville No. 1 in 1965 and 1966, Texaco’s Colville Delta No. 2 and Colville Delta No. 3 in 1986, ARCO’s Kalubik No. 1 in 1992 (the discovery well for the Oooguruk-Nuiqsut Oil Pool) and Kalubik No. 2 in 1998, and Pioneer’s Oooguruk No. 1 and Ivik No. 1 in 2003.
But because Torok is shallower than the two other producing formations at Oooguruk, essentially every well drilled in the region passes through it, some 37 wells to date.
|
