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RNST. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense

The timetable shown on Slide 11 of the January presentation certainly seems quite clear, but I think it's possibly still in the lap of the gods. While East Riding Council's planners appear to have signed off on the B-1Z EWT, I don't think we have been told yet if the EA and the OGA have done the same. So maybe the timetable was slightly aspirational. Does anyone know anything more definite about the testing status with the EA and OGA?

Gas is worth a lot less than oil in thermal terms right now, but its price has been going up sharply in the UK lately. The NBP (National Balancing Point) price can vary between about 15p / therm in summer and about 80p / therm in winter, and it’s currently about 50p. Since the thermal equivalent of 1 barrel of oil is about 6,000 cu ft or 60 therms, 1 boe (barrel of oil equivalent) is today worth about 60 x 50p, say £30. Brent oil is currently about $62.50 so, at £1.00 = $1.38, that’s about £45.30 in Sterling terms. So UK gas is today worth about two-thirds of the current Brent oil price. However, gas is usually worth a lot less than this, especially in the USA, where natural gas is currently trading at around $2.90 / MMBtu (or Mcf) making it worth only about $17.40 or £12.60 per boe. So I reckon we are on to a good thing here with WN's gas, regardless of whether we have a "lake of oil" or condensate" sitting below it.

Unlike some posters here, I’m not particularly disappointed by the lack of published news about the “promised” 500 bopd from Wressle. I too think the operator has done very well in the face of the COVID crisis to get it on stream at all. And we've been told that it's free-flowing, so it presumably won't need a beam pump to get the oil to the surface. I remain hopeful that the Ashover Grit will produce 500 bopd in the fullness of time, whenever that might be. What I'm trying to understand is the clean-up process and its duration. I’m more than happy to accept RNSTs suggestion that the depth of reservoir invasion / contamination might be no more than 1 to 2 metres, rather than my wild 10 metre guess. If that’s the case, a 2 metre Ashover invaded zone would need to flow only about 103 barrels to replace its volume once. II realise this isn’t very helpful when the clean-up efficiency is unknown - by us, at any rate. To demonstrate what I’m burbling about, if it was 50% per day, then it would take only 5 days (50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50%) to get the contamination down to about 3%. But if the clean-up efficiency was only 10%, it would take about 33 days to get the "gunk" down to 3% (90% x 90% x 90% ....etc, etc). So perhaps there's another reason why it could be a while;. But I’m certainly not anxious yet about Wressle's longer term deliverability.

How long will Wressle take to clean up on natural flow? I think it could be quite a while, based on a very rough “guesstimate”, but maybe someone better qualified could say if this sounds reasonable, or not. According the UK Geophysical Library, the Ashover Grit is 13 metres thick at Wressle. I don’t know how much of it was perforated, possibly only about 6 metres. As an extreme case, let’s assume that the entire reservoir might be damaged up to 10 metres from the well, perhaps by drilling mud invasion or by completion fluids, and that the average reservoir porosity is 10%, which is just my guess for a Carboniferous sandstone. This would give an affected pore volume of 408.4 cubic metres, or about 2,569 barrels. In the absence of anything better, I've used the 80 bopd test flow rate from 2015, so these 2,569 barrels of fluids could take up to 32 days to be produced. The well came on stream at the very end of January, as per the 1 Feb RNS, so clean up might be achieved in early March. If my possible 10 metre affected zone seems far too much, and it was only 1 metre from the well, the affected volume could have been only about 4.1 cubic metres, say 26 barrels, which should have cleaned up in less than a day. So I don’t think that an be right. Any ideas?

I'm still wondering how long Wressle might take to clean up on natural flow, and I think it could be quite a long time. This is a very rough “guesstimate”, so maybe someone better qualified could say if it looks reasonable, or not. According the UK Geophysical Library, the Ashover Grit is 13 metres thick at Wressle. I don’t know how much of it was perforated, possibly only about 6 metres. As an outside case, let’s assume that the entire reservoir might be damaged up to 10 metres from the well, perhaps by drilling mud invasion or completion fluids, and that the average reservoir porosity is 10%, which is just my guess for a Carboniferous sandstone. This would give an affected pore volume of 408.4 cubic metres, or about 2,569 barrels. In the absence of anything better, I used the 80 bopd test flow rate from 2015, so these 2,569 barrels of fluids could take up to 32 days to be produced. The well came on stream at the very end of January, as per the 1 Feb RNS, so clean up might be achieved in early March. Does a 10 metre invaded zone seem far too much? If the affected zone was only 1 metre from the well, the affected pore volume would have been only 4.08 cubic metres, or about 26 barrels, which should have cleaned up in less than a day. So I don’t think that could be right. Any ideas?

Sorry Heid, I couldn't resist. I really like your idea of a "propane squeeze". It would be a great way of getting rid of the excess gas in the Pen'stone.

You can still listen to it at: https://www.brrmedia.co.uk/investor-content/

You canstill listen in to the Q&A session at: https://www.brrmedia.co.uk/investor-content/

There's a helpful WN timetable in Reabold's January '21 presentation at:
https://reabold.com/investor-relations/reports-and-presentations/
It's fairly new and I suppose it's as accurate as they can be, given the logistical issues with moving test personnel from abroad during the UK lockdown. I'm assuming that RBD would have discussed and agreed it with Rathlin before publishing it.

If anyone missed the Q&A session yesterday and wants to have a look, it's still available at: https://www.brrmedia.co.uk/investor-content/

I think Colter was a great deal smaller than everyone was led to believe. I had previously fondly imagined, if it was to be successfully developed, that Colter would be tied back to Wytch Farm by a very long reach well drilled by Perenco from their onshore facilities. Either Perenco were never interested, or the development cost and / or the tariff that might have been charged was too great a proportion of any potential rewards.

I'm not sure if this is new news or old news but Advance Energy has just announced that P1918 which contains the Colter and Colter South discoveries, and onshore licences PEDL 330 & 345 have been terminated with effect from 31st Jan. So it's just as well that Corallian have recently picked up the attractive Victory discovery, which should soften the blow. On the California and Romanian fronts, I didn't get much comfort from yesterday's Q&A session, other than that California should see some activity once the results of the recently higher oil prices flow back to the company.

I thought S&S made a pretty good stab at answering a number of quite tricky questions today, although, to me, Sachin’s never looking at the camera has the unfortunate result of making him seem a bit evasive at times. Turning to the B-1 and B-1Z wells, which I’m very interested in, IMO it was probably because Rathlin adopted a Western Canadian reef model very early in their work (and it’s one that exists in Poland, but not here at WN), that they got into the B-1 situation and had to sidetrack as B-1Z. Still, they now have four very useful data points in the Kirkham Abbey which should help them refine their model, albeit at some extra expense. The KA reservoir has (or had) an area of about 4,500 acres, say 18 sq. km, according to Deloitte's 2017 CPR. That's quite some distance between each well for an onshore field. So there’s plenty of room for further WN appraisal drilling, as well as some B-2 early production!

Was that David Bramhill interview really today? To me it seems like the one he gave on Monday 1st Feb when the Wressle production start-up was announced

Hi AJamesW. I thought it might be useful to look back at the 2015 RNSs put out by Egdon and the other Wressle partners to check the actual test figures. I soon realised that the 700 barrels per day wasn't quite as one might think. It's true that Egdon got over 700 boepd on test, but it was from the three reservoir intervals combined, not just the Ashover Grit. And even then, about half of that 700 boepd was gas which can't currently be sold (or flared off) without an approved development plan for the two other reservoirs. These are the more "gassy" pay zones. The Ashover Grit alone produced about 80 bopd (plus a very small amount of gas) on test. So I can now see how something like the "proppant squeeze" might be required to get us to 500 bopd or better.

Hi Manwell02 & RNST. I'm looking forward to hearing S&S's responses to whatever difficult questions they are comfortable answering, but that might not be very many IMO. I've asked a few, both difficult and easy, of my own, for example " Following the B1 and B-1Z well results, do you think the Cadeby Reef is still a valid target". This should be easy for them to answer, one way or the other. Even so, I don't think they'll answer any of the more interesting technical Q's as they will probably fall into the "too difficult to answer in public" category. That's unless they have been well coached by the people at Rathlin. Regarding Manwell's comment that "B2 will of course (if successful) produce at a much higher rate than the deviated wells", do you still think that B2 will be drilled as shown on Slide 7 of RBD's recent presentation? If so, it looks more like a horizontal development well to me. I'm still hoping it will be further deviated appraisal well, but drilled towards the southern part of the WN structure. Maybe this diagram (which is based on a similar one in the 2017 CPR) is now so out of date as to be misleading, especially in the light of the B-1 and B-1Z wells. What do you think? I shall watch S&S's performance later on with great interest. I hope they get the balance between easy and difficult questions right. I'm a bit worried that it wouldn't take much to go amiss to turn them from "Heavenly Twins" into "Ant and Dec Mk II" if they are not careful.

HI RNST. Not to be left out, I've already submitted a few technical-ish questions for the Q&A session. Some should be fairly easy for S&S to answer, if they want to, if only to encourage them to open up a bit. Some are about WN of course, and might be a bit more difficult to answer- but not impossible I hope - as this would make the exercise pointless. I'd particularly like to hear what they feel able to say about the WN reservoir. They have probably been coached by Rathlin on any technical Q's and, even then, their replies might be wrapped up as "composite" answers to questions suitably re-drafted by them. This would be fine as far as I'm concerned, so long as we get some answers. However, if we receive only simplistic replies, some of my earlier worries about the management could be confirmed. I hope this won't happen, but S&S could easily be transformed from "Heavenly Twins" to "Ant and Dec" if their replies don't cut the mustard.

Call me an old cynic, but I worry that £12 billion of investment promised / offered by "Billion Pound Boris" may turn out to be like his pledges over NHS funding and social care. I can see that at least this magnitude of investment will be needed across the UK to renew our energy sector, but I don't think it will be HMG making it. Not unless it's the same £1 billion twelve times over, as is so often the case with the bunch of congenital liars at the heart of government.

No EWTs or CPR this coming week, or for a little while yet, judging by the timetable included in RBD's recent WN presentation. Perhaps something else might be announced by S&S in answer to a "planted" question, but it would have to be RNS'd at the same time if it was even slightly significant. I confess that I'm wondering why they would hold a Q&A session as it's not an AIM requirement to do this. So I'm with Heid on this, and assuming the new timetable is the official party line: B-1(Z) test in late Q1, then the A-2 test, and a CPR in late Q2 / early Q3. But WTFDIK. RBD won't have just pulled this timetable out of their hats, I hope. Maybe they will tell us what they are waiting for at WN now they have quite a bit more cash at their disposal.