LONDON (Alliance News) - Frontera Resources Corp Thursday said it will be capable of producing 10.0 to 20.0 million cubic feet of gas and 1,000 barrels of oil per day from the South Kakheti Gas Complex in Georgia before the end of the first quarter.
The company discovered the gas complex offered the opportunity to produce gas and oil whilst carrying out work on the asset in 2015, and Frontera has been focused on studying the asset further to help decide the best way to exploit the resources at the complex.
"As we begin 2016, our pending gas window and oil window operations at the Udabno-2 well and the Niko-1 well represent significant value additions related to our ongoing work," said Steve Nicandros, chairman and chief executive of the company. "Frontera is now able to advance early in 2016 to continue to unlock the giant oil and gas potential that is contained within the South Kakheti gas complex."
The Udabno-2 well is focused on the gas element of the project and is located within the western area of the Complex, where work is ongoing to continue to explore, test and add new gas production from reservoirs situated between 300 and 5,000 metres in depth.
Frontera has also designed a gas testing programme in partnership with New York-listed Weatherford International, which will evaluate an extensive gas-bearing interval of approximately 2,000 meters in gross thickness.
The Niko-1 well lies in the centre of the complex and is focused on the oil element of the project. Since December, preparation and mobilisation for fracking operations have been underway and Frontera now expects to frack this well as part of a three well campaign commencing in February 2016.
Production testing at the Niko-1 well recently resulted in a new technical discovery that has revealed better than anticipated reservoir parameters associated with this portion of the Complex.
Overall, those two wells are expected to begin delivering a substantial amount of production before the end of the first quarter, with oil production expected to start next month.
"Frontera's internal reservoir engineering models estimate production capability in the range of 10.0 million to 20.0 million cubic feet per day of gas once Udabno-2 is completed during the first quarter of 2016," said the company.
To place that gas production into some form of context, 1.0 million cubic feet of gas is euqal to around 172 barrels of oil equivalent, meaning Frontera will be producing equal to 1,724 to 3,447 barrels of oil equivalent per day from the Udabno well.
"Frontera expects upcoming franc-completion operations to potentially yield an initial production rate of approximately 1,000 barrels of oil per day for the Niko-1 well. In addition, two other related wells are expected to be completed in order to build on the new results observed from recent operations at the Niko-1 well," it added.
Placed together, the two wells will yield between 2,724 to 4,447 barrels of oil equivalent per day - which compares to Frontera's total oil production in 2014 of 61,000 barrels.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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