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Gas drilling in Canada on the road to record year
Gary Park, Petroleum News Canadian Correspondent
A rapid growth in natural gas drilling has put Canada well on the road to a record year.
Ignoring the usual spring downturn, operators set industry highs for well completions and new well permits for the first four months of 2003.
Completions soared to 5,485, 74 wells ahead of the 2001 record, while permits tallied 8,449, outstripping the 2001 benchmark by 808 approvals.
There was no hint of a let-up in April, with the industry logging 1,395 completions, short of the 2001 record of 1,515, although new permits climbed to 1,610, compared with 940 in April 2002.
Gas development completions hit a new all-time peak at 2,482, 22 percent ahead of last year, while gas discoveries totaled 1,092, slightly ahead of the previous record of 1,012 in 2001.
The outlook for gas is unabated, with 5,423 of the permits issued targeting gas prospects in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia — surpassing the 2001 record of 4,781 gas permits and outstripping the January-April total in 2002 by almost 2,000. EnCana leads the pack Of the four-month completions, Alberta had 3,006 gas wells, 811 oil, 449 dry holes and 42 service wells for a total of 4,308.
Saskatchewan recorded 848 wells — 424 oil, 371 gas, 37 dry and 16 service. British Columbia reached 269 wells — 193 gas, 53 oil, 22 dry and 1 service.
Eastern Canada had 36 wells, Manitoba 21 and Northern Canada three, although not all of the drilled in the Northwest Territories had been completed.
Easily leading the pack was EnCana, with 2,236 new permits, more than quadruple Canadian Natural Resources at 547.
For April, EnCana obtained 386 well licenses, ahead of Canadian Natural 187, Apache 143, EOG Resources 126 and Enerplus 71.
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