Talisman's ups Marcellus shale drilling plans - will add extra rig
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Talisman Energy Inc. (TSX:TLM) (NYSE:TLM), is an oil and gas exploration and production company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta.
It is active in the Utica shale play via its Gentilly well, located in Quebec, 62 miles south of Quebec City on the south side of the St. Lawrence River. Talisman owns a 75% interest and is its operator. It had been the first of four wells being drilled under a farm-in agreement with Questerre Energy Corporation. In September, 2008 this well had been reported flowing at 800 mcf/d before shut in. It had been a recompleted Trenton-Black River well that was producing from the Utica shale formation. With it, the Lorraine shale formation was also being studied.
The company held options to earn a large leasehold in the Province of Quebec through drilling. As of November, it had started to exercise its options to 1,200 net sections through having drilled the La Visitation well as part of a four-well pilot program. In January, 2009, the company announced the completion of the St. David well drilled to 6545 feet, as third one in the series. It had been in the process of undergoing log analysis. In late June, 2009, the fourth well, St. Edouard #1 had been fracture stimulated and tested for different intervals. The company planned to evaluate both the Utica and Lorraine shale formations. The Trenton-Black River interval had already been tested. For three days, the well had flowed at an initial rate of 2.2 Mmcf/d with wellhead pressure of 2,000 psi on a 7/32-inch choke after the acid stimulation. However, this flow rate had not been deemed adequate to justify a tie-in for the well. Thr well offsets another one called the Leclercville #1 that produced 900 mcf/d from the Utica interval in testing.
Talisman also owns a Marcellus shale leasehold in Pennsylvania, where it leases 140,000 net acres. The company has announced 2009 plans to drill 36 horizontal wells. (See July, 2009 update below)
In April, 2009 Talisman announced that it had drilled four horizontal Marcellus wells during the first quarter of the year. The company had fielded three drilling rigs to complete its 2009 drilling plans. The most recent of its four wells averaged 4.5 mmcfe/d during its initial 30 days of production. The company reported that it is experiencing greater cost efficiency with each new well it drills.
In a July, 2009 update, the company indicated that it planned to have at least four rigs in the field for the balance of 2009 and was increasing the number of wells it would drill for the year to 50. It also stated that the above-mentioned four horizontal wells were now averaging 5 Mmcf/d. The company had experimented with up to 11 fracture stages in drilling each of these at a cost of up to $4 million per well.
Fortuna Energy Inc. is a wholely-owned subsidiary of Talisman with large leaseholds in the States of New York and Pennsylvania.
* Talisman's President and Chief Executive Officer is John A. Manzoni.
* Scott Thomson is Executive Vice-President and CFO.
* Richard Herbert is the company's Executive Vice-President for Exploration. |
