Bankers sets Albania, Oklahoma outlays

Bankers Petroleum is seeking Albanian government approval to expand its heavy oil recovery activities in Albania and to restructure its US subsidiary into a separate entity.

March 25, 2008

2 min read

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 25 -- Bankers Petroleum Ltd., Calgary, is seeking Albanian government approval to expand its heavy oil recovery activities in Albania and to restructure its US subsidiary into a separate entity.

The company's budget for 2008 includes $45 million to drill, complete, and tie-in 30 wells in Tishomingo gas field in Carter and Johnson counties, south-central Oklahoma (OGJ, May 21, 2007, p. 40).

The field, which produces gas from Devonian Woodford shale, provided the company's first commercial gas production in September 2007 and resulted in 46 bcfe of proved and probable reserves at the end of 2007.

An addendum to the Patos-Marinza field development plan in Albania calls for applying infill vertical and horizontal drilling, waterflood, and thermal recovery techniques in addition to the well reactivations undertaken so far.

Planned activities in the next 3 years include reactivating 250 existing wells, drilling 60 vertical and horizontal wells, waterflooding 50 wells, and installing an eight-well cyclic steam stimulation pilot in 2008 and a 30-well commercial expansion in 2010.

Target exit rates are 7,000 b/d in 2008, 14,000 b/d in 2009, and 20,000 b/d in 2010. The Albanian budget is $80 million in 2008, $120 million in 2009, and $170 million in 2010.

A reserves assessment and capital program for Kucova field is to be announced by mid-2008.