The beginning of the 2006 hurricane season in the US finds operators girding for another onslaught of severe storms.
Onshore, inland waters, and offshore fields sustained damage, as revealed in OGJ’s extensive magazine and web-site updates of fallout from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, mostly by Senior Writer Sam Fletcher.
One of the fields in the path of destruction, South Louisiana’s giant Lake Washington oil and gas field, is more active than before and set to grow.
The operator, Swift Energy Co., Houston, implementing its emergency response plan in advance, prepared all barge-based equipment for Katrina and moved much of it to ports.
The company had shut in the field by the time the storm raked the inland waters along the Mississippi River southeast of New Orleans last Aug. 29.
The storm cut access to the 17,350-net-acre field’s shore base at Port Sulphur, in Plaquemines Parish along the path of Katrina’s eye, so the company moved offices 60 miles west to Dulac, La.
Then what few operations had restarted it idled again Sept. 23 for Rita, whose eye passed over the company’s Cote Blanche Island field in St. Mary Parish.
Storm fallout
Some drilling resumed between the hurricanes, but Swift Energy deferred 10-15 wells planned at Lake Washington and several other South Louisiana properties into 2006.
Despite the storms, Lake Washington field provided 45% of the company’s total production in 2005.
The field’s production was 12% higher at the end of 2005 than at the end of 2004. Output climbed to 80% of pre-Katrina level by Oct. 5 and near normal in December after third parties returned gas pipelines to service.
Swift Energy retained 100% of its pre-Katrina workforce in the area and restarted operations faster than many competitors. It expanded crew quarters on barges to allow workers to return to a schedule of 7 days on, 7 days off.
Nearly all employees outside the area worked extra hours and raised $200,000 that the company matched to assist affected employees and surrounding communities.
2005 developments
Swift Energy, which acquired the property in 2001, had drilled 152 wells in the field with 75% success. The 2005 total was 32 wells with 66% success.
Through the end of the year, it had encountered 74 pay zones in Miocene sands around the salt dome. It had made completions in 36 zones with an average 142 ft/well of net pay, mostly at 1,500-6,000 ft with some as deep as 12,000 ft.
The 152 wells included 26 exploratory wells, eight of them drilled last year, with 63% success. Swift Energy drilled the first three wells based on analysis of 55 sq miles of 3D seismic data acquired in 2004. It also has 3D data on 550 sq miles northwest of Lake Washington and over the company’s Bay de Chene field in Lafourche and Jefferson parishes.
The first 3D-based well, on the Newport prospect on Lake Washington’s northwest flank, found 44 ft of pay in a sand section at 10,418 ft new to Swift Energy and went on production in December 2005 at 1,823 b/d of oil and 1.32 MMcfd of gas.
The second, a Newport delineation well, found 283 ft of net pay in three zones. The lowest zone tested 3,792 b/d of oil and 2.7 MMcfd of gas in the same section found in the initial Newport well, and the second zone tested 3,637 b/d and 2.8 MMcfd.
The third well, on the Bondi prospect 5 miles northwest of the dome, found 37 ft of net pay in two zones. The lower zone tested 1,560 b/d and 700 Mcfd and the upper zone 1,723 b/d and 1.1 MMcfd.
The second and third wells were too late to contribute to 2005 production or reserves.
2006 program
Swift Energy allocated $175-195 million of its $300-325 million in 2006 capital spending to South Louisiana.
Outlays of $265 million in 2005 included deck expansions at Lake Washington’s three production-processing platforms, which, delayed by the storms, were completed in January 2006. The work brought oil-processing capacity to 28,000 b/d. Gas compression capacity is 44 MMcfd.
The field’s end-2005 reserves were 41 million boe, 41.4% undeveloped, compared with 45.4 million boe at the end of 2004. Swift Energy expects a 5-8% increase this year.
Two barge rigs are to work all year at Lake Washington, drilling as many as 32 wells, and the company is looking at adding a 10,000-b/d production platform on the field’s west side.