Member Info for Bubblepoint

I see the more common level of trading in Angus is back, zero trades after an hour & half !!

Penguins,

It is simple, they will run an ESP (pump), that is not affected by difference in liquids, and it pumps out water direct from near reservoir depths.

The problem with natural flow is that you can shut a well in for a day, let the oil leg build in the well, which also gives a lower weight/hydrostatic column, and will flow out the oil leg built up, to a point where water coming back into the well initially replaces much of that oil column and simply stalls out to zero.

Not rocket science, and a pump will easily demonstrate ability to both flow hydrocarbons, and what rate of replenishment the reservoir to wellbore is (porosity & permeability) for potential commerciality.

Ermmmmmmmm yeah TC,,, That's why they are still £20 million in debt AFTER almost 2 years of production,,,,, £117 million profit !!! I think it is far more likely something else, not the undermined SLBY.

Lol Philboro, I hear ya, and hope you do see more substantial upward movement, though I know when I have been holding stock in similar out of the blue rallies, it triggers a lot of personal unease, in do you simply carry on and hope there are grounds for it and it is just the start, or is it more sinister and comes off just as hard, I know from my past experiences what i would lean to do, but it is also so easy to get carried along with the unknown too...

Best of luck though mate, been a tough one for many,

Be interesting to see if anything uber positive is RNS'd in the next 24-48hrs, as that would really show this as about as leaky as a cullender !!

In fairness Maddog, HITS may well be silent based on "we don't know what is behind this little flurry", even I am surprised, and I really do not feel it is related to SLBY, could be something Balcombe related or other, that said, I am still happy to see folk having a better day here !!

And I have always maintained it will have it's day again, just don't know where, don't know when !! but it is a start !!

Looks strong, THOUGH no real info or reason for that as yet, but it is at least offering some kind of hope for long term sufferers. All the best !!! lets hope they tell the market something good.

What a leg-end. more like !!

Ahhhh good, I will sleep much better relying on Pee Boooo highly intellectual & informative posts lol.....

I think you are confusing Balcombe with UKOG's Turkey testing lol..... now there's a cracking example of nothingness in a bottle. lol. Ps,,, How is Adrian (the mole)

Well I will leave the world to evaluate your high quality post Peeeeeeeee Boooooo,,, as clueless as ever, give Adrian my regards in the den !!

""indeed, it cost $14.5m to drill one and test a tiny 20ft vertical interval. the cost for drilling a horizontal would be significantly more""

no **** sherlock !!! but what you fail to also note is that the biggest cost for any well is actually getting down to top of reservoir, and that is not hugely different be it for horizontal or vertical reservoir section drill.

also you fail to note that drilling say 3 horizontal wells strategically in the right places for optimal drainage can be the equivalent of needing up to a dozen or more vertical type wells, sooooooooo overall it is far far more economical to drill horizontals. ohhhhhhhhh and you have far less wells to abandon (p&a) at end of field life tooooo.

next !!!!!!!!!!!

Doesn't normally translate to a good time for oil stocks FormerlyeasyP, it is linked to hostilities between Iran & Israel, a typical global influence, which often also causes tin hats to be worn as folk run for the hills...

Personally don't think it is quiet there as yet, and hopefully not at all, but in this fastest finger first world we live in today, anything is possible.

Penguins,

There will ALWAYS be potential for pockets of migrated/trapped hydrocarbons with such a vast source throughout the basin, finding them is the real skill, and then the big question, commercial or puddle ?

Either way, they already demonstrated there are mobile hydrocarbons at Balcombe, I think my write up was pretty clear on most fronts, but it will at least be interesting to see how this one comes out...

Ocelot,

Yeah, but either way, Vonk, GL, etc they are just as bad as each other, same as the leader of this too. terrible. BUT hopefully RH is a little more on point, though much damage to repair.

Hi ZYX,

Yeah pretty disappointing in that regard, as you say, cheap & cheerful to use and clearly demonstrates what is what.

That said, Angus were imo "sloppy" much of the time in their past, and their past leader Lucan, left a lot to be desired in his approach and corner cutting. I do believe the new leadership is a "little" more switched on, and prepared to "try" and stay on the straight & narrow, which "may" at least ensure they do this properly the next time round, ultimately resulting in a definitive proven or fail, not some carp that is full of grey, foggy sheite and unanswered questions.

Penguins, below is my take on Balcombe, using ALL info and my 30+ years industry experience & Knowledge, may prove right or wrong, but from my side I deem it VERY strong potential. I wrote this post about a year ago for the Angus board, but since you are discussing it then I thought I would put it here too.

My take on Balcombe:

Primarily Balcombe was a successful discovery, they discovered light oil and produced from it under testing conditions.

The well had to be lifted prior to testing, meaning they had to run coiled tubing to enable pumping of Nitrogen which lifts the column of kill fluids, residual drilling fluids etc that are sitting in the wellbore and preventing the reservoir from producing any hydrocarbons.

They achieved natural flow to surface for both tests, the first test produced notable water along with hydrocarbons, roughly 850bbls of oil with approx. 200bbls of water.

The second test flowed naturally to surface at almost double the flow rate of test 1, approx. 1600bbls of hydrocarbons and a much reduced volume of water, approx. 105bbls water.

The Company also noted they initially recorded flow at around 3000bbl/day with the well slugging.

What do I take from all the general information available and apply my take on that ?

OK, I don’t take much notice of the stupidly announced initial slugged 3000bbl/day, why ? because often what companies do is they might get say 125bbls of oil slug to surface in the first hour only. What do they likely mean by “slugging”, well this is most likely referring to the coil tubing that is pumping down nitrogen to start lifting fluids out of the well, the nitrogen is a light pocket/bubble of gas pumped under the column of fluid in the well, the gas wants to rise to surface and while doing so the pockets of nitrogen lift/drive out the fluids above them. The slug is referring to the pocket of liquids being lifted by the pocket of gas to surface.

So what a company can do is say Heyyy ok there was still a chunk of nitrogen left in the horizontal when we opened the well for the first flow test and that nitrogen came out from the horizontal and then slugged up some notable slugs of oil to surface, equating to 125bbls in the first hour, 24 x 125 = potentially 3000bbl/day.

It isn’t a good idea to spout slugged numbers, they are very unreliable and likely without the residual nitrogen escaping back out the well. It would never naturally produce such a high constant 24/7 rate.

Move on to the “actual” rates, the 1st flow test had a 22% water cut, which they were not expecting, and with this amount of water entering into the wellbore will seriously inhibit production and flow stability, water is heavier (denser) than oil so any water rising up the wellbore will weigh on any lighter oil trying to come to surface, this means your wellhead pressure is going to be less and may even stall out to zero if enough water % is entering into the wellbore column to surface.

Move on to test No 2, they flowed at double, approx 1600bbl/day, and MOST importantly only produced around 105bbl/day of water. You ask HOW so ? surely double the oil rate should = double the water rate.

For me it was very significant, it was demonstrating that whatever water was remaining in the wellbore and near wellbore reservoir was depleting, it was depleting because this water was pumped into the wellbore likely as a “kill fluid” and because water is more dense than oil, it will try to go all the way down, and possibly push into the near wellbore reservoir, where it will sit until the day someone lightens the fluid column back to surface again, and then what happens is the oil sitting behind the suppressed water then drives the water outwards and upwards to surface.

What they eventually discovered was that the water was of high salinity, similar to Brines used for well kill purposes etc, and the salinity did not correlate to anything within the region.

Therefore I strongly expect that a much longer test period would see water production eventually decline to zero.

Importantly, what needs to be considered is that the Balcombe target reservoir was only 2700ft from surface, which means that the pressure at reservoir is very likely not that high. Example, if the pressure at reservoir is say 1000psi, and say light crude oil has a gradient of 0.2 psi/ft then that means the column of oil to surface (2700ft) weighs 540psi, meaning you only have an underbalance at reservoir of 460 psi trying to push the oil out at surface. (simplified in layman terms), if you have saline water in the wellbore too, saline water could be 0.5 psi/ft, so if you have 1/3rd of your wellbore with saline water in it and 2/3rds filled with oil to surface, then the surface pressure will be zero, the column weighs greater than 1000psi at reservoir and you well will not flow until you remove more water.

My take on the actual flow rates achieved: The Company stated it was a 7 day test, but did not state how long each test was physically run for, it could be hours, it could be days, only they know. But the important fact here is they did demonstrate highly mobile light crude that did produce naturally and dramatically improved by the 2nd test, that tells me the reservoir pressure isn’t huge at that depth, because the significant increase in oil to surface was because the saline water was also significantly less, meaning less weight of water in the column to surface holding back the oil wanting to get out.

Is Balcombe commercial ? In my opinion it is highly likely it is commercial, but it is highly likely that long term sustainable production would be by installation of completion with pump to eliminate the issue of wellhead pressure/reservoir pressure decline.

What rates are possible long term? I do not think they would look to produce big numbers, I think they would go for much lower steady & continuous production, maybe 300=500bbl/d. I think that for 2 main reasons, firstly to best manage the reservoir and allow optimum drainage to be achieved, and secondly it is highly likely Balcombe would require onsite facilities to process and store, before being road tankered away.

A typical tanker can hold around 200bbl, and I do not think they would push locals and local routes with more than 2 possibly 3 tankers back and forth each day, even that could cause local irritation and issues, and likely onsite storage would need to be limited, maybe 2000bbls processing and storage to limit local focus.

That is my take on I ;-))))))))))))

Surety,

There will ALWAYS be sellers, same as it requires buyers for any seller to sell into. as to what are buys & sells, well it is pretty much impossible to be sure, delayed trades, worked bulk trades, could be either way, but one thing is certain if they were all sells we would not be sitting at neigh on 10p right now, and I for one would rather any distressed seller is gone BEFORE we get drilling.

ATB.

Cyan,

You are far from correct regarding Balcombe, it has been clearly demonstrated that they simply failed to clean out the kill fluids etc from the drilling processes during that initial test that was performed, the plan going forward is to re test it and ensure it is cleaned up fully, for which I strongly believe will prove strong hydrocarbon rates.

Brockham IS a total waste of time, but likely Angus simply want to play with it and squeeze a few more worthless barrels out of it rather than P&A and have to run the "return" to field restoration cost.