Member Info for seisprocessor

hi casper786, that's a couple of good questions you're asking!

after the disappointment of adv, i'm aslo happy to be in bce and to stick around for a good while to see this one grow.

i'm a geophysicist not an analyst or trader, but i can have a go at your first question about reserves - if nothing else, it passes a quiet nightshift whilst working offshore:-)

the calculation for reserves is:

stoiip = ‘x’ bbls/acre * area (acres) * average pay thickness (feet) * porosity (0.xx) * oil saturation (fraction) * oil shrinkage (1/bo)

the 2u/2p reserves quoted in the admission document and tennyson note gives 3.42-3.8 mmbbls for graben and schb. with little facts to go on other than these documents and the information given in the latest rns, it’s possible to do a rough calculation to get a ball park figure.

since the calculations have already been made for the reservoir properties that we don’t know about, and given that there’s no water found or owc or gas present, then we can make the assumptions that some of the factors - no. of bbls /acre, area, connate water saturation and formation volume factor (gas in place, water in place) - won’t change too much from schb-1.

so just keeping them the same and changing the calculation for the increases in pay thickness and porosity seems reasonable.

we know that the meletta in schb-1 is a thin oil-bearing sandstone overlying the thicker pbs strata.

schb-2 for the pbs strata alone contains a gross/net oil column of 34/28m. the latest rns states that for the thicker oil-bearing net reservoir, this net column and higher range of porosities 18-26% all significantly exceed pre-drill expectations.

presumably the thickness of the meletta zone is according to expectations, with all target horizons coming in 25m higher than prognosis.

looking at the previous example log diagrams in the investor presentation, it looked like the zone of interest was between 1400-1450m with three zones on the resistivity log showing two shallower sandstone units of 4m thickness and one deeper one slightly thicker at 5m - so 4+4+5= 13m in total?

what was the pre-drill porosity expectation – same as schb-1?

porosity logs in the presentation (page 11) look like an average of 13% and peaking to 18%.

if so, then porosity increases by a factor of 18/13(38%) or 26/18 (44%).

my back-of-a-***-packet scribble says take the original value of 3.42mmbbl, double it for thickness, add an extra 40% for porosity and throw in an extra 10% for expanded area of the reservoir contours (at 25m shallower than expected):

e.g. 3.42 * 2 * 1.4 * 1.1 = 10.5 mmbbl.

the implications of this for the rest of the graben area heading south to schwarzbach south and also steig can be significant. even if my assumptions are hopelessly off the mark, one thing for sure is that a successful result here will lead to the reserves increasing with every new well drilled.

this is all just guesswork on my part, so as always,

dyor and imho

seis

Thanks for posting the link Looked - that's great news. Hopefully the company will now be one step closer to starting some sort of official communication with its shareholders.
Happy Easter and best wishes from offshore Malaysia!

Speaking of JA, he was a busy chap yesterday - becoming senior independent director at BLOE.
I wonder why he's taken on another directorship with them - their share price has been a disaster!
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/BLOE/appointment-of-sid-ny6irvapcipt18i.html
I'm now up to 7.5m shares in TRP, so am as keen as anyone for this to do well.
Hopefully Beluga can get their finances in order very soon, so that the deal can be signed off. Tempted to message them using their contact us page!

The operations update video from Guram Maisuradze is now on Vox Markets...

https://www.**********.co.uk/articles/block-energy-operations-update-from-wr-b1-well-site-8051bc9

Hi dai2belts,
That's a very good question!
I invested on the basis of drilling Kasuku - perhaps if they had drilled it first, the company wouldn't be in the predicament that it finds itself in now. I think they were all set to drill Kasuku before DM had his head turned by a cute, young geologist in the office and suddenly it's all off to Tai!
Deep drilling is risky, as we have seen, and should be done on the basis of 3D data, not 2D infill.
The top Karoo seal they will know does increase in thickness going north according to their seismic and gravity, but Tai-1 showed that an adequate seal could be achieved with a much thinner seal anyway.
The targets at Kasuku were far more robust for imaging with 2D data, and you're right that the Red Sandstone formation is thinner there and the Karoo target above 750m.
Also the prospect of more helium present towards the rift valley wall due to increased hydrothermal activity.
There's still 2 months of the season to go, and Mitchells could have drilled it. So either Mitchells didn't fancy being paid in (now cheap) shares for doing it, or He1 didn't want them to do the work. Very strange really and nothing ever discussed about the issue, nor the question even asked by any of the interviewers!
There's no mention of Phase II containing a mixture of south and north targets either.
I think we as shareholders should be allowed to ask such questions.

Good Morning all!
It's been a while since I was last active on the bb, but some great posts coming in today after the traders have cleared off for the bank holiday weekend.
I've been involved with shooting a 3D seismic survey offshore Angola for the past 5 weeks and now sailed north to Ghana, west Africa for a flight home next week.
Not been impressed with DM's performance at all - either with his ramptastic tweets during the drill or his decision making with Tai-2. He seems all over the place in his recent interview and I'm not sure going after localised pockets of helium in shallow strata close to the main faults and chasing these stratigraphic traps with 'new geophysical methods' will achieve significant results. If there are shallow targets that can be easily and cheaply drilled in the next 2 months at low risk, then that is certainly a low hanging fruit that should be pursued however.
My take on the results are:
1) Fantastic that a working helium basin system has been proven, with helium migrating up from basement pre-Cambrian source rocks via major strike/slip faults.
2) Disappointing that there was no free gas accumulation found in the Red Sandstone Formation, although helium shows present throughout. The 4" drill was clearly not up to the job, with slow progress and high pressure muds causing washouts in the sandstone units up to 11" wide. Why was there no free gas in this 'must drill' stacked targets location? The structures in the seismic data were complex and possibly the targets didn't have 4 way closure. Was there a reverse strike/slip fault behind the 2D infill line? Without 3D data we'll never know.
3) The geological sequence encountered at Tai-1 matched very closely with the seismic data and also very similar to well log results at Ivuna-1. So the 130m thick shale unit at the top of the Karoo can be considered a major regional seal and can be modelled on the existing data fairly rapidly. The vast majority of helium liberated from basement rocks is still trapped under this sealing unit, and we know from Ivuna-1 the large thicknesses of underlying sandstone units in the Karoo formation.

Malcy has given He1 a mention in his most recent blog:
HE1 has completoed its current drilling campaign which in itself is somewhat unexpected as at the start it was described as a ‘Three well exploration programme targeting shallow trap structures to a maximum depth of 1200m’. It goes straight to Phase 2 and has £10m with which to play the drilling probably sooner rather than later given the rainy season in November.
https://www.malcysblog.com/2021/08/oil-price-petrotal-iog-helium-one-hunting-echo-and-finally/

I look forward to hearing more details of Phase 2 when they come and I appreciate all those who've taken the time to post their thoughts on here.

Hi dai2belts,

Thanks for posting the links.

Certainly very encouraging when DM ends the interview with the comment about moving from the first exploration drill into the first discovery drill and a big grin!

I've been in Scotland visiting family for the past week before going offshore Angola next month, so haven't been reading the posts so much. I do hope that my previous comments have helped folks in their understanding of the seismic data enough for them not to panic sell last Monday morning when news of the drill pipe broke.

For me it is a double confirmation that thin shale units are enough to provide sealing and this considerably de-risks the prospects. At 561m, the helium show looks to correspond with a strong reflector just above the 1st target zone, and the fact that it was in a zone considered low prospectivity tells us that it's still in the lower Lake Bed sediments and still another 50m at least before moving into the Red Sandstone formation which should be happening about now.

Looking at the Ivuna-1 log, you'd hope to encounter a number of thin shale units capable of sealing helium and overlying thicker sandstone ones, so the next news over the coming week is likely to be about further helium shows. Whether DM describes them as simply further encouraging helium shows or a discovery only he will know, but I'd be wary about trumpeting a discovery until the primary target in the Karoo is reached and confirmed by wireline after TD.

To be making the comments he has so far, he must be confident in the data coming in - pressure gradient, increasing levels of helium, working basin system with a near vertical migration path from the basement up the strike/slip fault and very little horizontal migration required.

So IMO plenty of reasons to hold and sit tight!

@dai2belts

It's now on the 8th day since the drilling ahead announcement on Twitter on June 30th and yesterday's video clip with the mud showed that drilling was still progressing as normal.

Confirmation of the 400m depth came on 1st July and no announcements made yet of any discovery. So this tells us that there's no news yet. The company decided not to spend time doing wireline to 400m and continued with casing and drilling ahead. DM said this was so they could save time and press on with their quest to achieve a discovery not to mention minimising risk to the borehole and also helping to keep the well on budget and to schedule. If the Lake Bed sediments were largely shale prone as expected, then this makes sense.

The progress has been slow and cautious so far, and aside from guessing the number of pipes on twitter photos, let's assume that the rate of drilling has remained cautious at, say, 40m a day.
Not unreasonable as it's in an undrilled area and care is being taken to analyse rock cuttings and monitor helium levels as well.
8 days at 40m a day would mean reaching a depth of 720m by the end of today in theory.

Given that the Lake Bed sediments likely extend down to 600m at least (can't really predict on 2D data accurately without well log calibration) then the drill bit should be passing through the predicted fine grained shale seals at the base of the Lake Bed sequence and into the first target of the upper Red sandstone.

So what can we expect here? The well log diagram in the Hannam broker update of 23/6/21 shows the Red Sandstone and Karoo sequences from the Ivuna-1 well that correspond more closely to the Tai seismic than the Galula-1 well further to the east. The column comprises mostly sandstones with thin interbedded shales. The sequence at Tai will be different, but not too dissimilar to what's illustrated, and there is a noticeably thick layer of sandstone near the top of the Red Sandstone sequence.

The top of the Karoo sequence is even more exciting, with thicker sequences of porous reservoir sandstones overlain by even thicker sections of shales and acting as effective seals in the target 2 zone.

The aim of this exploration well is to make a discovery and obtain helium samples. DM has stated that he will not make a discovery announcement until helium shows are verified by the onsite geologist which correlate with sandstone reservoir units. News could come now at any time for this, but given the proliferation of sandstone units in this basin sequence with multiple stacked targets, it's more a question of when rather than if!

Looks like dbd and skittish both beat me to it with their observations...
Good explanation with the pressure gradient!
When DM was asked if he was optimistic in the video interview, he mentioned a few things which weren't interconnected, so the comment about Boyle's law - we don't really know what he was alluding to with that one other than the greater amount of gas stored in the constant volume with higher pressure.

I too noticed the diminishing stack of pipes in the background.
In my world of offshore seismic, posting pictures of selfies on social media with technical equipment in the background can get you into trouble, so I'm surprised that they can risk giving away inadvertently any details that might be significant.

For example, I counted 150 pipes from the 30/6 picture on the SWL 10,000kg rack, which I think are 5m in length (the guy standing next to it at, say 1.75m tall, gives it some scale) which would be 750m of pipe.
Today's picture with 3 less rows looks to be about 91 pipes, or 455m left. So a different calculation but the same answer as skittish with 295m of pipe used. Not sure if that equates to being 295m further on from 400m, but if so then they're not hanging about.
I guess we'll find out in the next selfie when there's no pipes left in the rack!

So one idiotic tweet caused a 11% drop in the SP!
What was said in the 2nd tweet with the 4 photos is that they are going to be busy today with drilling ahead.
Drilling ahead means the actual drilling of the well.
My take on this is that they reached 400m in the past 11 days through the largely shale prone lower Lake Bed sediments, possibly at the weekend, did wireline and have now cased the well successfully.
So onward and downward with drilling ahead now through largely sandstone bearing sequences, with the riskiest part of the drill now over.
I could be wrong, but there's been no indication on any problems and the corrected tweet confirms that.
DM promised that he would notify the market if any helium shows were found (which he has done already) and also if a discovery were to be made (correlating helium shows with reservoir sands).
He didn't actually promise to release wireline results after 400m, so that can be done at their discretion, but it sounds like they want to give updates when good news arrives.

ST,
I wouldn't get too wound up about the timing of the next RNS just yet.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is the last RNS which stated that warrants for 1m shares were exercised and due to be admitted to the market at 8am today. We saw a 1m trade go through late on Friday and they might even be the warrant shares for SCIR.
In my experience of investing in AIM oil companies, generally you wouldn't expect to get an RNS with bumper price sensitive news landing at 7am and affecting the value of the new shares before they've even hit the market.
Normally they need to be admitted at the fair market price and be allowed to trade for a day or so first.

Hi kalinit & dai2belts,

Some very good posts this weekend...I was expecting the North Wales town I live in to go bonkers last night after a Welsh win, but it ended up being unfortunately a rather subdued night instead!

I wouldn't get too hung up on the percentage differences of He used in the CPR.

All SRK have done is recalculate estimates using the new 2018 guidelines from the Petroleum Resource Management System. The differences between the 3.9% figure for Tai P50 and 4.9% P10 is just the way it ends up after assessing geological risk using the guidelines.

Once a producible reservoir is identified then the play risk factor will change and so the numbers will increase considerably. SRK have already said that they cannot use the seepage figures from Itumbula as a guide, so their ball park figures are reasonable.
Again, this will change if samples can be obtained from the lower targets.

I wonder if Mzizi will be offered as a possible location for the 4th well for Mitchell Drilling...I'm sure their priority remains to test as many trapping styles in the exploration phase as possible.

skittish,
The possible change in strategy is a good question to ask!
Listening to a recent interview with DM, I got the impression that the next 2 wells would be targeting Kasuku and Miombo which makes perfect sense to me.
There is Itumbula as a possible 4th well, but, IMO, that one is too risky to drill on the basis of 2D data (due to the steeply dipping reservoirs and steep fault planes), and would need 3D seismic data to image it sufficiently. So one thing that DM might be discussing with Mitchell Drilling is a different location for the 4th well based on what is happening on the ground at Tai just now.

I don't see them deviating from the plan announced in the recent RNS's even if there is a discovery in the Lake Bed Sediments : i.e drill to 400m then run wireline then run casing, then drill to TD then wireline again. There won't be any flow testing in the Upper Red Sandstone formation. It will be very interesting to get wireline results of any possible reservoir sand units within the lower Lake Bed Sediments.

I had a re-read of the admissions doc and the CPR in the light of what we now know about the first 70m and the following bits I've picked out relating to the Lake Bed Sediments with my highlights in capitals. Although it was only a secondary target before, perhaps it might be of greater interest now!

Page 96 (p 26 SRK CPR)
6.1.3 Reservoirs
Sandstone reservoir units are present in the two historic petroleum exploration wells at several levels in the Rukwa Basin. These comprise the Lake Bed Formation, Red Sandstone Group and Karoo Super Group.
The sandstone deposits occur throughout the sedimentary section, within sequences interpreted as of fluvial, deltaic, lacustrine and flood plain environments.
Petrophysical log analysis from Ivuna-1 and Galula-1 well data calculated sandstone reservoir porosity in the Karoo between 13 and 18%, and BETWEEN 15% and 30% within the Lake Bed Formation and Red Sandstone Group.
6.1.4 Trap styles
The Rukwa rift is dominated by sand with shales more sparsely distributed through the stratigraphic column. Consequently, the trapping potential is more restricted by the presence of seals than by presence of reservoir. Seals are present within and at the top of the Karoo section as evidenced by the Ivuna-1 well (page 89).
The overlying Red Sandstone is very sand dominated with little potential for extensive seals.
Helium can be trapped at the top of the Red Sandstone by lacustrine shales at the base of the Lake Beds and ANYWHERE WITHIN ALTERNATING SAND/SHALES THROUGHOUT THE LAKE BED SEQUENCE.
BOTH HAVE GOOD POTENTIAL FOR STACKED ACCUMULATIONS.

@dai2belts

I'm still here! The bb went a bit crazy last week, so I switched off and got tickets for Wembley stadium on Friday to see Scotland play against the Auld Enemy. It was good while it lasted!!

skittish made a number of good points yesterday, and I was going to reply to you today....but the new Hannam report today has beaten me to it!

The most significant bit for me is the 3rd paragraph - proving the basin model:
'A helium show in a virgin basin is highly significant as for the first time it proves the existence of helium in the subsurface. We think that it is relevant that the helium show was directly below a shale sequence as it demonstrates that the helium is being trapped by traditional siliclastic sediments which are found throughout the Rukwa sedimentary sequence.'

We know that there's no helium seeps on the ground at this location and we know from the seismic that the strike-slip faults don't reach as far as the surface, since the shallow upper lake bed sediments lie unconformably over them. The faults do penetrate as far as the top of the lower lake bed sediments, so it will be very interesting to get the reports from the next section down to 400m next week.

The fact that helium has managed to migrate this far up and be trapped by a thick shale sequence is incredibly good news and bodes well for further updates - particularly from the Red Sandstone and the thick shale/sandstone formations at the top of the Karoo group.

There will be numerous helium shows to come, and I'm now a lot more comfortable holding until TD and wireline results. The biggest risk now is borehole instability in the Lake Bed sediments and so I applaud the cautious approach being taken so far and the decision not to do any drill stem tests down to 400m.

Same time 4.45pm Houston time

It's ZM's home address!

I caught the first name as Paul Gilbank, but missed Gregor's (or Gregorz') surname.

Glib, Ezhik, deepbluediver -all good and helpful posts, setting out the reasons for your thinking.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with making an educated guess!

I know almost nothing about mineral rig drilling, so can't comment on the techniques.

However the clue to what will be carried out might lie with the budgeted figure of $1.5m for each of the first two wells. This is 50% cheaper than a drilling rig would have cost. So a no-frills exploration well with 3 days of wireline at TD perhaps.

DM said in a recent interview that 6 3/4" cores would be taken during the appraisal stage, but no mention of any coring during the exploration wells 4" drilling that I'm aware of.

I would think drilling full speed up to 200 feet/day would be unlikely. The drilling mud will have to be constantly checked for losses and weights adjusted, given that this is a new well in an unexplored area and the drillers will have to learn as they go. There will be poorly compacted shales in the shallow lake sediments and also lots of interbedded shales within the sandstone reservoir targets.
And hopefully gas kicks in the Karoo supergroup to contend with!

The 2nd and 3rd drills might be a bit faster once they know what conditions to expect. So there is a mixture of highly porous sandstones and also shales, which are impermeable in the vertical direction (good for acting as a seal), but have high permeability in the horizontal direction when pushing drilling fluid into the side core.

I had estimated 140 feet per day based on taking 4 weeks to drill 1200m.

So matching that rate to the estimated depths would give, IMO, first possible helium shows reported below the unconformity around day 8, and from first target zone in the Red Sandstone formation at day 16.
Anyway, that's just my guesswork, and sits either side of your day 11 estimate.

Hi Mole, I was watching the live feed last night with interest!
From my notes, Exhibit 7, the forward sales agreement to GC to pre-buy crude oil of 25 April 2018 was approved by FRGC Branch by ZM and Sandro Moniava, GC(classmate of ZM's son, Nikoloz). No security was given in the agreement.
$5.8 received by FRGC Branch, but SN said no evidence it was ever received.
In section 5 of exhibit 7 on page 15, security was given to GC by FRGC Branch. However, SN said the Georgian Court set aside assignment to GC and that the GG did not approve security to be given to the license.
Hope this helps. I will look forward to the cross examining of ZM tonight for sure!

Spiritefan - I'm with you....just bought 28000 at 17.57p.
Look forward to a steady upwards climb from here as spud approaches.