St. Malo Lower Tertiary oil flow rate tops 13,000 b/d

Feb. 28, 2013
Chevron Corp. has disclosed that it flow-tested the initial development well in St. Malo field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico last year at an equipment-constrained rate of more than 13,000 b/d of oil.

Chevron Corp. has disclosed that it flow-tested the initial development well in St. Malo field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico last year at an equipment-constrained rate of more than 13,000 b/d of oil.

St. Malo field, which a Chevron-led five-company group expects to bring on production in 2014, is a joint $7.5 billion development with Jack field in 7,000 ft of water 280 miles south of New Orleans.

The St. Malo PS003 well test on Walker Ridge Block 678 took place in August and September 2012 and tapped Lower Tertiary sands more than 20,000 ft below the sea floor. Chevron didn’t offer why it had not revealed the test results until now.

Chevron and partners set several records in 2006 when they completed what at that time was the only extended well test of a Lower Tertiary well in Jack field. The Jack-2 well in Walker Ridge Block 758 sustained flow rates of more than 6,000 b/d of oil from 40% of the total measured net pay of more than 350 ft (OGJ, Sept. 25, 2006).

Jack and St. Malo fields lie within 25 miles of each other in the southeastern reaches of the Lower Tertiary Trend and are being developed with a host floating production unit to be sited between the two fields.

The unit is planned to have a design capacity of 177,000 b/d of oil equivalent to accommodate a maximum of 94,000 boe/d from Jack/St. Malo plus output from third-party tiebacks (OGJ Online, Apr. 26, 2011).

Chevron has a 51% working interest in St. Malo field. Petrobras has 25%, Statoil 21.5%, and ExxonMobil and Eni SPA 1.25% each.