Ramco Energy PLC, Aberdeen, Scotland, set production casing on its first new well in giant Muradkhanli field, one of Azerbaijan's largest onshore fields.
The well is the country's first land well drilled under a production-sharing contract.
Muradkhanli, in the Kura basin 110 miles southwest of Baku, has produced about 20 million bbl of oil through 1997. It was discovered in 1969.
The field is believed to hold as much as 5 billion bbl of oil in place, of which some 450 million bbl is thought recoverable.
Ramco holds 50% interest in Muradkhanli, Jafarli, and Zardab fields under a production sharing agreement that covers the 565-sq-km Muradkhanli block. State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar) holds the other 50%.
The contract has provisions for field rehabilitation and exploration and development.
Muradkhanli was shut-in before Ramco spudded an appraisal well, MOC-01, in January 2000. The field had been producing about 550 bo/d and had 43 producing wells, 18 suspended wells, and 49 abandoned wells. An analysis indicated that the field's low production rates are due to several factors but mainly lack of appropriate drilling and completion methods, Ramco said.
Oil exploration that began in the 1930s led to identification of several major structures along the southwest flank of the Yevlakh-Agdzhabyedin trough.
Muradkhanli's first oil was from fractured Upper Cretaceous volcanics. The high-rate wells quickly watered out. The field's peak production was 9,000 bo/d in 1978, almost all of which was from Upper Cretaceous.
All three fields have oil in Middle Eocene sands/marls at about 4,600 m and in the Paleocene-Eocene Maikop and Chokrak sandstone reservoirs. Middle Eocene is fully developed in Jafarli field and almost undeveloped in Zardab and Muradkhanli, where it has a combined closure of about 500 sq km.
Ramco set 7-in. casing at MOC-01, which found oil in Middle Eocene and a potential new pay in Upper Eocene at 4,300 m. TD is 4,567 m.
Muradkhanli oil is shipped by rail. The field lies along tracks between Baku and Poti and Batumi on Georgia Republic's Black Sea coast.
