Texaco-Tenneco combine seeks gas in Poland

Polish Exploration Area [48,529 bytes]

Texaco Inc. and Tenneco Energy, though a joint company, have begun exploring a 1.18 million acre concession in Central Poland, southwest of Warsaw.

The partners aim to explore Permian Rotliegendes gas intervals at 3,500-5,000 m on the eastern end of the southern gas basin, which extends from the North Sea across Netherlands and Germany and into Poland. Officials estimate total southern gas basin reserves at 100 tcf.

Texaco pointed out that other companies are producing Rotliegendes gas at other places in Poland.

Work on the Texaco-Tenneco acreage is proceeding under a license granted Mar. 1. That followed acceptance by Gminas-local Polish political units-of a two phase, 6 year exploration program agreed to in an earlier contract between Texaco-Tenneco joint company Wielkopolska Energia SA (Wpesa), Warsaw, and Poland's Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources & Forestry. Sixty-six Gminas in Wpesa's consession area had to approve the program for the deal to advance.

Wpesa's concession covers Blocks 229, 249, 250, 270, and 271.

At last report, Wpesa seismic contractor Geofyzika Torun, based in Torun, Poland, had begun acquiring permits for a 1,000 line km, 2D seismic survey through the heart of the acreage. Geofyzika Torun is to begin collecting data in the second quarter.

Terms of the work program require Wpesa to collect, process, and interpret the 2D data within 3 years. Drilling could follow in phase two of the exploration period if new 2D data firm up prospects indicated by older regional seismic.

Opportunity of timing

With Wpesa's Polish acreage squarely within the eastern extension of the southern gas basin, Texaco described the five tract concession as an opportunity of timing.

"Generally speaking, there is Rotliegendes gas production across the entire length of the trend from the same types of traps and seals," said Frederick Frankel, Texaco's exploration coordinator for Poland.

"When you cross the border into Poland, you go into an extension of a known play where for many years exploration and technology has been lagging that at the western end of the trend.

"If this acreage had been available to the industry years ago, surely our tracts would have been drilled by now."

Frankel said source rocks for Rotliegendes gas are Carboniferous coals and shales, overlain directly by fluvial, eolian Rotliegendes reservoir sands. Rotliegendes formations, in turn, are overlain immediately by thick Zechstein evaporites, thousands of feet thick in some places, deposited in four cycles.

Most gas from the trend is produced along the southern edge of the basin from reservoirs in eolian dune type facies at the top of the Rotliegendes.

The Rotliegendes on Wpesa's blocks underlay thick Zechstein sediment between Carboniferous gas generative formations and areas in Poland of shallow Rotliegendes gas production.

"We think the path of gas migration clearly is through our blocks," Frankel said.

Poland first offered the five tracts in Wpesa's concession in 1991 as part of the country's first oil and gas licensing round.

Based on its review of regional data packages covering the five tracts and others, Texaco at the time recognized the area's gas potential. However, despite the technical and geologic merit of the acreage, the company decided against participating in the first Polish tender because of political and economic uncertainties.

When Poland again offered much of the acreage in which Texaco was interested in its second international tender, which closed Apr. 12, 1994, Texaco and Tenneco won the exclusive right to negotiate a concession on the five blocks.

Wpesa and Poland's environment, natural resources, and forestry ministry drafted the concession contract according to the Polish geological and mining law enacted Feb. 5, 1994.

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