LONDON (Alliance News) - Nighthawk Energy PLC, the US-focused oil production company, Friday reported a rise in daily production during September as it prepares to bring an additional two wells into production by the end of October.
The company reported average gross production of 1,804 barrels of oil per day from all its wells in the Smoky Hill and Jolly Ranch projects in the Denver-Julesburg basin during September. Average gross oil production stood at 1,694 barrels per day in August.
During October, the projects have increased average daily production to 1,931 barrels of oil. Although two new wells were brought into production during September, three wells were taken offline for several days for maitenance, said Nighthawk.
A further well, Salen 14-35 is undergoing initial testing and is expected to be brought online this month, as is the Snowbird 16-15 well, which is expected to start production toward the end of the month.
Nighthawk is now focusing on capturing behind the pipe production from the projects, referring to oil and gas resevoirs that have been drilled through but not yet tapped or produced. The company has identified several behind the pipe targets which can be completed in a matter of days with nominal capital expenditure, it said.
Behind the pipe production will "provide the highest capital efficiency projects available to the company at the lowest levels of risk," it added.
"In general, these projects can be completed at a cost of approximately USD50,000 per zone and we expect to execute a number of them prior to year-end," said Chairman Rick McCullough.
"The results from [behind the well drilling] just one Pennsylvanian zone turned the well from a dry hole failure to a commercial well," he added.
Nighthawk shares were up 5.6% to 8.34 pence per share Friday morning.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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