Member Info for adoubleuk

TradingLad,

" It is also worth mentioning though onshore O&G exploration isn’t big business in the UK (when you compare it to offshore) so there simply isn’t the same abundance of equipment to get hold of"

I hasteen to disagree with you there. The equipment used onshore (especially regarding well testing) is exactly the same as that used offshore. And individual equipment 'units' are skid-mounted in loads sized for UK truck transport. How do you think such equipment gets from the contractors' yards to the dockside?

The only 'unique to onshore' element involved will be a small land-transportable workover rig, but I feel sure Rathlin will 'have dibs' on one, even if it's not actually waiting 'on standby'.

This having been said, I have a gut feeling that if the EWT is going to 'extend' for any length of time (ie become an EPS, or Early Production System), there will have to be some civil engineering done. For instance concrete bases poured for things to stand on, loading facilities for tankers (no doubt conforming to strict HSE regulations) and so on. And that sort of stuff doesn't get built overnight. Not in the UK.

ronok,

Just to keep you happy, I'll comment briefly on one or two points you've made.

"My read on this is that there must be a very good system of oil filled fractures from the oil/water contact right up to the horizontal leg. Reasonable to assume these will go some distance above that."

Yes, OK so far.
"Does this not prove an oil column right down to the oil/water contact and if so why would you need to drill to prove up this part of the reservoir?"

The 'oil column' is prety much by definition the depth where oil is encountered down to the OWC!

"I do not see why the oil has to be produce for say 12 months to prove up the reservoir with these very high natural flow rates. Does anyone expect the fractures to open and shut like clams?"

No, the fractures won't open and close like clams. Also, to be simplistic, the 12 months are not needed to 'prove' the thing. EPS is already going like the clappers. But (as per a post I made a couple of days ago), the purpose of the EPS is to 'evaluate' the field, and check that acquired data (produced oil can be considered 'data') matches that of the computer modelling, and that in fact the field's 'extent' (and future production azs predicted by the company) is not an exageration.

"Have not seen the final natural oil flow rate for Lincoln yet but expect them to be in the order of double the initial flow rates when equipment, chokes etc. are removed. What applies at Lancaster should apply at Lincoln."

No, nither have I. Hurricane didn't mention 'natural' flowrates on Lincoln in the RNS. However (like you) I suspect that final production flowrates (whenever that may be) will be higher than during DST, just as was the case on Lancaster. The DST was short-duration, remember. However (technical point), 'equipment is not removed'! It's just different equipment in place. In fact that was a nice surprise about the initial EPS results, because in some ways there is more equipment in place than for a DST. Like 2.5 km of flowline, which produces its own friction-loss backpressure, and so on. Plus the wells are still producing via chokes.

"Cannot see why water would migrate from the oil/water contact level up to the horizontal leg in one well at Lancaster with this great oil filled fracture system. This is more likely to happen in 10 years or so when the water level is closer to the horizontal leg in my opinion."

Yes, a subject flogged to death, and already addressed (and mitigated for) by HUR, and explained countless times over. The contrary argument is mainly propounded by people whose reputation stands to be dented when they're proved wrong, and / or those who'll have some explaining to do to their shareholders as to why they misinterpreted the potential of Fractured Basement to start with.

LW,

"Why not do what I'm doing?
Have yourself frozen; then you can have yourself de-frozen some time next century when HUR shares finally take off."

I'm afraid you may be taking this 'chilling-out' stuff too literally. Or maybe been reading too many Robert Heinlein sci-fi novels.

Next thing will be you'll be suggesting that when you get defrosted, they might have invented time-travel, as well. So you'll be able to cash in your HUR shares (maybe hitting 75p by then), take the money back in time to October 2019, re-invest, and make a fortune.

(Though I was wondering what that 'mini-spike' last week was all about. Maybe you've already done that, but don't know about it yet.)

About 18% of the human body is composed of carbon. I'm 'overweight' at the moment, weighing about 80 kg instead of my 'better' 76. Too much beer. So that means about 14.4 kg of myself is carbon.

However, rough calcs indicate that my feet only represent about 5% of my total body mass. So doing some simple sums, I think I've got an approximate 0.0175 kg 'carbon footprint'.

But of course, I suppose that only works when I'm standing up.

What if I'm sitting down? Maybe my 'carbon assprint' is bigger.

Only people who spend most of their time sitting down worry about this stuff, anyway.

I've been led to believe that the human population of the planet exhales about 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year.

But so what? Maybe if we didn't, the trees would die.

Gf,

"flts NOT fits"

Yup. Now found those posts. Flights cancelled, no doubt due to weather. I see nothing indicating drilling progress one way or another. Forget my 'FIT' reference in earlier post.

fl,

"by Laserdisc and Gibso6767.......suggest drill more advanced stage than expected on this bb?.... what is meant by 'fits'?"

I can't find their posts. When do they date from?

As for 'fits', that might well be a reference to a FIT, which is a Formation Integrity Test. But I have to read the context first. If a FIT has only just recently been performed, it might tend to indicate that drilling is not further ahead than anticipated, but in fact the contrary.

I seem to recall that some wrote here a while back that advfn has two parallel HUR BB's, rather like this one on LSE and then the 'Premium' BB. If so, which board is it on, and how do I access the other?

HH,

Nope, it was onshore. The field ended up being called W.Nafoora. Nafoora itself is a highly prolific Fractured Basement field yet further to the east.

HeidHoncho,

Thanks for your reply, and the details about Aberdeen port.

Also, you mention two things that I totally agree with. I suspect we may have been typing at the same time!

" it takes a deal of conditioning/acclimatisation for the drill clues to become comfortable with the need to drill on whilst encountering measured/controlled losses."

Yes. And not just the drill crews. Such a situation can case a lot of people a lot of lost sleep! I'm in an anecdotal 'old man' frame of mind today, so remember possibly the worst 'drilling with losses' situation I found myself in, in the Egyptian Western Desert, in 2001. 100 km west of Cairo, not a place where water is plentiful. And on that particular well, at one point we had a fleet of more than forty tanker-trucks (mostly privately-owned) shuttling water to us from every waterwell in the region. And Egyptian tanker-truck drivers being as they are, they wanted a sandwich while waiting in line to offload at the wellsite, or a bottle of water, or both, and a top-up of diesel, or whatever. Multiplied manyfold. Even the A/Cs at the camp weren't safe. Anything not bolted down got stolen. Ten days of pure mayhem! But we survived, and the well was a goody, so all worth it.

"Drilling fractured basements require most normal ideologies to be sometimes turned on their heads"

Yup. And you've just said in different words the same sort of thing I posted earlier. It's more a 'mindset' thing than anything else.

But what's nice to see is the steady offloads from Lancaster. Wasn't it General Westmorland who said "Grab 'em by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow"? Or was it Nixon? Whoever, doesn't matter. But each offload from the EPS must be making a few petrogeologists wince...

Genghis,

Dammit. I have some pressing and far more important stuff to do this evening, also including sitting in front of a computer for hours, but I seem to have been sidetracked into this BB instead. Which is sort of relaxing in a way, because when I get back to my 'work' stuff (which has to be done), it'll be a drag. It's going to be a long night.

But

"The EPS is currently proving concept"

I have to disagree with you on this. It's a sort of 'detail' point I've repeated here many times, but is maybe misunderstood.

This may seem nit-picking, but it's important. Because the term 'proving concept' raises a generally accepted image in peoples' minds, and this isn't what the EPS is about.

The Wright brothers 'proved the concept' that a person-carrying heavier-than-air machine could actually fly. What it didn't do was prove that a machine could be built to carry hundreds of people at high speed and cheap cost to almost anywhere in the world. That just came as a natural evolution.

Some people are under the misunderstanding that the Lancaster EPS is trying to 'prove the concept' that Fractured Basement reservoirs can profitably produce oil for a commercially viable period of time. But that's wrong. It's a misunderstanding. For the simple reason that there are FB fields dotted around the globe that have already 'proven the concept' time and time again. There's NOTHING NEW about FB. Sure, it's recent, compared with the overall time the oil industry has existed, but that's all. Furthermore, (and completely unlike that unrelated animal, Shale Oil), exploiting FB relies on no new and untried technologies such as heavy-duty 'fraccing'.

The only difficulty is getting some died-in-the-wool petro-geologists to change their mindset and accept that some outdated preconceptions might have been wrong, after all.

People who categorically state that Fractured Basement 'doesn't work' are in fact no less stupid than someone who argues that aeroplanes don't fly.

All the EPS is doing, es 'proving up' the Lancaster field. Demonstrating it works like the modelling suggests it will, and that the assets are commercially viable. And so far, it appears to be doing a very good job of that. Of course, it'll put a few peoples' noses out of joint. Being forced to eat one's own words can be an unpleasant experience. But sometimes it just has to be done.

There's absolutely nothing new about installing an EPS on a new field, neither. It's a very very common thing. An EPS provides data whereby one can better pin down the worth and characteristics of an oilfield, while at the same time being a relatively cheap way to obtaining cashflow, cash to be churned back in to further development and so on. And keeping all the people involved on the payroll, of course. An EPS is just an 'evaluation tool', no more, no less.

HeidHoncho,

In that case I stand humbly corrected. It's many years since I last visited the Granite City, and decades since I lived in that neck of the woods. My belief was that bulk fluids were loaded at Pocra, but if you say that belief is misplaced, I'll accept it. I don't think I'm alone in having that wrong idea, though.

But that having been cleared up, for the benefit of all and sundry, maybe you could enlighten us about something related. Pocra was (nb past tense: don't know about the present) the main loading-station for bulk powder, such as barite and bentonite. But if memory serves correctly, there were also silos close to Waterloo, belonging to Dowell, I think. Would this be correct?

Also (in self-defense, and probably due to age), I sometimes get an incorrect mental image of the port, and get Waterloo Quay and Regent's Quay mixed up. Not that I'm going to jump on a plane and return to that cold and windy place just to refresh my memory.

canetois,

" I never serviced anyone call Amy for 40 years. "

Phew! That's that little misunderstanding cleared up, then! Though within the (possibly misintepreted) context, I found the idea of you applying light oil to your weapon AFTER hitting the target slightly puzzling...

Canetois, (and IAmNotAnAnalyst),

Thank you for your support.

However

"somewhere along the lines they have for some reason, competitors for pride of knowledge place perhaps, fallen out with each other which, recently has gained in intensity"

is maybe making too strong a point.

Wellwell and I frequently disagree and have fallings-out. It tends to be cyclic, like sunspots, and just because there's been some 'peak activity' of late, that doesn't mean the world's about to end.

Heck, sometimes I even hit the 'recommend' button for some of his posts, but try to keep very quiet about it.

Oil-people can sometimes be very inter-personally competitive: it's part of the territory. But it doesn't really mean anything. I wouldn't mind meeting Wellwell for a pint sometime: we'd probably get along just dandy.

Especially if it's whatever company he works for which is paying for the drinks...

Wellwell,

"I’m not doubting your previous experience, but clearly that wasn’t in fractured basements...."

You're correct there, and I've never said I've had much FB experience. In fact only recall one well where we hit basement 'high' where we weren't expecting it to be, and we did the same as Shell, Arco et al did in the 70's WoS. Cored it, and P&A'd. And that core intrigued the hell out of the geologists, because there was oil in it... This was in Libya.

Later (same company), we drilled an exploration well further east, and hit highly fractured limestone, and it turned out to be an extremely prolific well. Also encountered losses while drilling, but countered it with traditional LCM ( 'lost circulation material' ) treatments so it didn't cause us many headaches. Specifically, we used a lot of acid-soluble Calcium Carbonate, which had the benefit of also partially acting as a fluid weighting agent during drilling, thereby killing two birds with one stone. Prior to DST 'cleanup' we did a quick 'acid job' and the well came in like a train.

No doubt Hurricane has very good reasons for not doing this I can think of a couple of possibilities, but don't want to stick my head out (on a potential chopping-block) and put them in writing here.

If we absolutely HAVE TO re-raise the spectre of my misinterpretation of the snippets of info I was getting about Warwick Deep, the reasoning for my mistake was logical, even if it turned out to be wrong. WD was the first well drilled since Halifax. And we knew that the DST failure there was planted firmly on the doorstep of various drilling fluid properties. But equally, it was patently evident from the acquisition of the 'clogging gunge' extracted from CT cores that losses had to have played a part. Otherwise the 'gunge' wouldn't have 'invaded' undrilled part of the formation. Also we were told after Halifax that the company would be looking at reformulating the drilling fluid to mitigate such risks.

I assumed that the reason for 'nominal losses' on WD was a result of such modifications to the mud, and the inclusion of some sort of LCM. It made sense, especially as the low losses conflicted otherwise with other infomation passed to me, the reliability of which I now doubt, even though I believe my source was acting in entire good faith.

Turned out my assumption was wrong, as assumptions often can be. (To 'assume' sometumes just makes an ass of U and me.) It happens.

But also, that's why I'm making no public speculations about the outcome of the current well, and also deliberately not trying to get any info about progress. Sometimes ignorance can be bliss, and the less I know, the fewer (possibly incorrect) assumptions I can make about the outcome.

Hope you understand this.

Wellwell,

I don't mind that quote. But bear in mind that I've had more experience of mudlosses over the years than you've had hot dinners, sunshine.

It is only since the CMD presentation (post WD) that we've had it confirmed 'straight from the horse's mouth (ie from Dr T) that significant fluid losses are an indicator of a successful well outcome. It may have been implied before, but the data (as usual) was sparse.

And as you yourself well know, if you know anything about oilwell drilling, 'mud losses' are something to be controlled, at least, even if they can't necessarily be completely overcome. Losses don't simply lead to logistical headaches, but can also result in pressure-control nightmares unless carefully managed.

Wellwell,

"As for your other musings on ship movements you do make me laugh when you tell others not to postulate whilst postulating ;-)"

If at least I can make an old miseryguts like yourself laugh, I guess I've done my good deed for the day.

As for the other question regarding WD, I was working with incomplete and conflicting information (same as I do when playing my favorite card game), and made the wrong call. I've openly admitted that more than once, so why bring it up again? It's one reason I don't post here much these days.

tdg,

" knowing all this how come that major after all this time aint came in ?"

That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it? I for one certainly don't believe the 'big boys' are deliberately ignoring what Hurricane's up to, especially the potentially huge assets they seem to be sitting on. But one thing's for sure. Hurricane alone won't be able to 'organically grow' GLA full field development in a realistic timeframe without significant inputs of serious money, so at some point some outfit with deep pockets is going to have to be taken on board.

But maybe just as a partner or farminee. I take all talk of 'takeover' with a large pinch of salt. Sure, takeovers happen. But there's no guarantee that this will be the outcome in Hurricane's case. I don't think Dr Trice has ever publicly said that his company's for sale and is looking for a 'buyer'.

And if what the future holds happens not to be a takeover, but just a significant farm-in, what happens to the SP? Will it necessarily jump if BP suddenly announces it's going to help develop GLA? I don't think so. Not necessarily. Because BP (or whoever) will naturally want their share in the loot as a result. Let's face it, the current drilling on GWA is a free ride for Hurricane, thanks to the Spirit buy-in. But is the SP anywhere near its all time 67p high? No, it ain't.

feelinlucky,

Three years ago I was an avid 'shipwatcher', during that crucial drilling campaign, and also followed the 'Voyage of the Aoka Mizu' with interest, but now, for me, that activity has faded somewhat Fortunately there are still others around to check on the maritime stuff and keep us informed. Such as yourself.

However, I do sometimes see people getting a bit over-enthusiastic with their 'shipwatching'! As evidenced by your phrase

" The previous visit by Troms Capella offloaded half it's cargo then the other half within 24 hrs then headed home."

OK, we've learned the timings, but exactly what the TC was doing out there is impossible to tell unless one was on the rig or the boat. Maybe she first came in to simply offload fuel, a catering container, and some mud chemicals, then came back in to take backload like surplus leftover 9-5/8" casing, casing - running tools, the empty catering container, and so on.

I haven't a clue. I wasn't there. But the point is, absolutely nothing can be read into the proximity of the boat to the rig when she's there, nor deduced from it.

We've now also now got a 'shipwatching subset' of people banging on about mud losses as though they were experts in the matter. Personally I do find it interesting to note that a further PSV has been added to the roster, but the thing to watch for if significant quantities of bulk brine are required is a boat hopping over to Pocra Quay before sailing. That stuff doesn't get loaded at Waterloo.

PLus something that mustn't be forgotten is that Warwick West is the last of this three-well campaign for Hurricane before the rig moves on to work for someone else, so there will probably be significant equipment backloading to be done when this well's wrapped up, no matter what the result. Such as (for example) the directional driller's shack and associated stuff, maybe the mudlogging unit, the DST test-spread and tubulars, and so on, and so forth.

So the addition of an extra vessel to streamline the operation isn't really all that surprising, anyway. Supply-boats are a lot cheaper than an additional (and avoidable) extra rig dayrate.

I hope these comments don't sound over-critical. They're not meant as such, and keep up the good shipwatching work! :-) But let's keep it factual.

SGbaby,

I admire your analysis, and thanks for having posted it.

Personally I remain confident in this share, based on the technical fundamentals regarding the leases into which S&S have invested, using OUR money! However the recent raise can't help but have caused me some doubt.

As you put it in your 'Three Options' post,

"S&S have abandoned their entire business model and have decided to build a company for the long term and their own person gain. Their gain will not come from share price appreciation but from other sources like salary and bonuses plus a good job at a major later down the line. "

OK, that's pretty much a 'worst-case scenario', which might lead us to believe that S&S are scammers and ripping us off through slick talking by themselves and their partners.

A situation which through 'confidence' I'd prefer not to believe.

However, I think I'd like to hear via a company website (not necessarily via RNS) exactly how the newly-found funds are going to progress things on the ground. Like putting in a foundation for the big storage-tank at West Newton so that EWT can re-start, like properly testing Parta, and doing the proper tie-in in California so that production becomes 'de-constrained'.

I dunno, but as a little PI O&G investor, I'm becoming a little bit sick of these 'jam tomorrow' stories as regards my investment. Especially when the jam appears to be plentiful, but none arrives on my own plate.

* 'bemused'.

DC,

"In Centrica’s results Spirit Energy is referred to as a robust, self-financing entity. Can you support with evidence your contention that Spirit is in such financial difficulties it puts in doubt their ability to fund their commitment to the deal with HUR ?"

A very well-put and well thought ought reply to the 'doubter'. Seems like some people are getting to mix up their Spirit with their Centrica.

The reason I'm replying to this in my (now more sparse posts here) is that it reminds me of about 15 years ago, when I was wellsite consulting (in the field) for Wintershall in the Libyan desert. I dn't think it will put anyone's nose out of joint to recount such anectotal stuff.

The thing is, Wintershall was not publicly traded at the time.

Nor is Spitit, right now.

But Wintershall was the offshoot O&G branch of BASF. And it'd be superfluous to say who they were or are. (I generally think of BASF in regards to good tape cassettes, but that's just showing my age.)

But the thing being, it was little Wintershall who was keeping the entire company afloat, with production, and then a massive off-field discovery, which scared everyone on-site silly during DST so we never really 'opened it up'.

Of course, since then the N. African plays have gone to sh**.

I am purmused by today's sudden rise, and if it's 'news from the field' am reticent to buy into that, because once bitten, twice shy. The hire of an extra supply-bout is interesting, for sure, but until one of our 'spies' offshore see a flare, I'll treat it as usual speculation by those with the wherewithal to do that.