Sherritt International Corp., Toronto, has resumed drilling of a key exploration well in Cuba after an interruption caused by Hurricane Irma.
The storm did minor damage to the company’s oil and gas, power, and mining operations in Cuba.
Sherritt said on Sept. 20 that drilling had recommenced at its second exploration well on Block 10, for which it received a production sharing contract from state-owned Cubapetroleo SA (Cupet) in 2014.
Its first Block 10 well, drilled directionally from land to a target in the Bay of Cardenas off Matanzas Province, reached 4,232 m MD of a planned 5,836 m in March.
It failed to reach the target formation in the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous Veloz Group, the most important producing formation in Cuba. Sherritt has gross working-interest production totaling about 14,545 b/d of oil from Varadero, Puerto Escondido, and Yumuri fields on older blocks in Cuba.
The Block 10 well targeted the Lower Veloz carbonate, from which a hole Sherritt drilled in 1994 briefly tested 3,750 b/d of 13.6° gravity oil.
The new well lost wellbore stability before reaching the Lower Veloz because of repeated occurrence of the less stable Vega Alta formation.
Sherritt sidetracked the well into the Upper Veloz formation, identified before drilling in reprocessed 3D seismic data.
The Upper Veloz yielded good oil shows, but the sidetrack trajectory was not high enough on the structure.
Testing of the sidetrack produced oil at noncommercial rates.
David Pathe, Sherritt president and chief executive officer, said results of the first well didn’t change his company’s assessment of Block 10 potential and provided important data about the basin’s fold-and-thrust geology.
In its financial reports, Sherritt has said further Block 10 investment depends on results of the second well, expected in the fourth quarter.
