Tajikistan
Tethys Petroleum Ltd., Guernsey, Channel Islands, said it is negotiating a production sharing contract with the Tajikistan government covering the large Kulibsky (Kulob) area in the Afghan-Tajik basin in southwestern Tajikistan.
The company expects to have a PSC or similar agreement in place by the fall of 2007. That will allow field rehabilitation to start and seismic data to be shot to firm up several attractive leads.
The company said the Kulob area has existing discoveries in a proven hydrocarbon system with several source and reservoir rocks and large structures created by tectonic activity and active salt movement.
California
Tri-Valley Corp., Bakersfield, spudded a well to shallow Upper Vaca tar sands at its Pleasant Valley project near Oxnard in California’s Ventura basin.
After taking a vertical core, the company plans to drill 1,500 ft horizontally and inject 600° steam to repressurize the reservoir.
The Upper Vaca is as thick as 500 ft compared with the Canadian tar sands that typically occur in 60-ft stringers, Tri-Valley said.
The plan is to drill multiple wells to Upper Vaca before drilling deeper into the Lower Vaca. The company also intends to drill a 10,000-ft exploration well to appraise at least seven other oil-bearing zones in the Ventura basin, which as one of the world’s deepest basins contains sediments to about 65,000 ft.
Pennsylvania
Atlas Energy Resources LLC, Philadelphia, and its investment partnerships have drilled seven vertical wells to the Devonian Marcellus shale in western Pennsylvania, six of which have been completed with results that pleased management.
The black, organic rich Marcellus shale is 100-150 ft thick at 7,000-8,500 ft on the company’s leases, which total 213,000 acres.
The company plans to drill several more vertical wells in the next few months followed by a full gas development program starting in the fourth quarter of 2007.