By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 8 -- CanArgo Energy Corp., London, said it will bring underbalanced drilling equipment to aid in its horizontal development and exploration programs in the Kura basin of former Soviet Georgia.
The company plans to drill the first multilateral well in the Caucasus and further develop an important oil discovery in the southern Caucasus.
CanArgo's production goal is 5,000 b/d in the republic by yearend 2004. It produced 1,929 b/d of oil in Georgia in 2003, 142% above 2002 output and two-thirds of Georgia's 2003 production.
The company's oil reserves in Ninotsminda field were 6.762 million bbl at yearend 2003, up 63% from a year earlier. Gas reserves fell 62%.
With a dynamic reservoir model in hand and the underbalanced drilling equipment due in the field by May, CanArgo plans to drill the N22H and N30H wells horizontally. It also plans an east-trending horizontal leg, N100H2, from the N100 wellbore. N100H1, a west-trending leg drilled last year, is making 500 b/d.
N99, to have as many as three legs, is planned in largely undeveloped eastern Ninotsminda.
CanArgo is acquiring a 50% interest in the Samgori Block XIB and operatorship of the production sharing contract. Samgori, a continuation of Ninotsminda, has a primary reservoir in the same fractured Middle Eocene sequence as Ninotsminda but thicker and of better quality. CanArgo plans as many as ten horizontal well bores there.
Georgian Oil estimates that only 32% of the estimated 550 million bbl of OOIP in the main part of Samgori has been recovered. Samgori averages 700 b/d, and several other reservoirs have potential.
CanArgo also plans more drilling at its 2003 Manavi M11 discovery, which found 34.4° gravity oil in more than 490 ft of Cretaceous limestone reservoir topped at 14,265 ft. Tubing collapsed at the discovery well, which was not tested.
Manavi M7 south of M11 found hydrocarbons in Cretaceous more than 4,265 ft deeper than in M11 and also had hydrocarbons in shallower Middle Eocene.
CanArgo was also drilling Norio MK72 at 12,591 ft in late February toward a large Middle Eocene objective at 16,400 ft similar in size to adjacent Samgori field. Georgian Oil is funding this well.