Oil barrel15 Oct 2013 23:10
October 15, 2013
Poweralternatives:Green Dragon Investors Warily Absorb News That Third Parties Have Drilled 1,500 Wells Across Its CBM Blocks In China
By Amy McLellan
Investors in Green Dragon Gas have long lamented the slow progress in drilling up its six coal bed methane blocks in China. As we have pointed out before, the coals here have proved challenging and the Hong Kong-based company has had to develop its own drilling and completion technology to unlock the gas from the brittle, faulted seams. It has also had to build up its own in-country rig and technology capabilities, since spun off into separate companies, namely AIM-quoted Greka Drilling and Greka Engineering & Technology.
After 15 years of working up its acreage, the company now has 67 LiFaBric wells in production delivering production of 697 million cubic feet of gas in Q2 2013, or around 6.5 million cf/d. Yet those numbers, released in July, actually fall far short on the numbers from actual wells across the 7,600 sq km it holds under PSCs. For it transpired last week that a number of Chinese companies, including China National Offshore Oil (CNOOC), CNPC, PetroChina and China United Coalbed Methane Corporation (CUCBM), have drilled around 1,500 wells across five of the company's six blocks, of which 1,300 are on the flagship Shizhuang South PSC, at a cost of more than US$500 million.
Green Dragon has asked the companies and the Ministry of Land and Resources for all information from the wells and say it believes any revenues and reserves from the wells will accrue to its benefit. Once it receives the information it will conduct an independent audit of the impact of these new wells on its 1P, 2P and 3P reserves while the invested capital may be used for cost recovery purposes under the terms of the PSCs.
Investors may be astonished that so many wells could be drilled without Green Dragon's knowledge. The company points out the five PSCs in question cover 6,620 sq km and company founder Randeep Grewal, who said he was “over-whelmed” by the number of wells drilled by the third parties, pointed out it was impossible to be vigilant over the entire licenced area. The third party wells only came to light when the licences were re-issued this summer.
Grewal said he expected the accretive impact of the wells to be material on production, reserves and revenues. The company also wants to evaluate the types of wells drilled so it can adjust its well patterns to accommodate the findings. Until the data on the new wells has been received, the company is suspending any aggressive drilling campaign or related financings.
“We are committed to amicably concluding the material impact within our PSC areas in various aspects and look forward to capitalising on this accelerated development to significant commerciality. However, we stand ready to enforce our PSC rights in the event there is any procrastination on such a mutually beneficial conclusion," said Grewal.