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Gold/Mining/Energy : KOB.TO - East Lost Hills & GSJB joint venture -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dave E. who wrote (2825)	5/28/1999 7:48:00 PM
From: ogod	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 15703

hot off the press, sort of, finally some numbers, though they don t sound all that great 10m p day? grey hairs any extrapolation Lost Hills blowout capped Filed: May 28, 1999 Bob Christie Californian staff writer After more than six months, a blow out in a wildcat natural gas well near Lost Hills has finally been stopped. The months-long effort to stop what has been one of the largest blowouts in modern California oil industry history finally was successful at about 9:30 Friday morning. That's when heavy drilling mud being pumped down a relief well that had been drilled to intercept the blown well's casing more than three miles underground succeeded in blocking off the flow of high pressure gas and water to the surface. A final step in securing the well is ongoing, with cement being pumped into the well to permanently seal it, but at this point the success of the operation appears very likely, sources close to the operations said. Officials with the operator of the well, Calgary-based Elk Point Resources, Inc., did not return calls seeking comment. But others involved in the effort said crews at the relief well site began pumping drilling mud into the relief well just after dawn Friday, and at about 6:30 a.m., a device designed to perforate the space between the relief and original wells fired, cutting holes that mated the two wells. The mud then flowed into the blown out well,clogging up the piping and adjacent rock structure so no gas or fluid could escape. The fiery blow out happened on Nov. 23, when the exploratory well being drilled for a consortium of Canadian and U.S. independent oil companies encountered extremely high pressure less than 20 feet into what they believed would be an oil and gas reservoir 17,600 feet underground. Natural gas came roaring up the well bore as the Nabors Drilling USA crew ran for their lives. No one was injured, but the multi-million dollar deep drilling rig was destroyed when the gas erupted into flames hundreds of feet high. The blowout was one of the largest in Kern County's modern oil field history, as could set off a new round of exploration in an area where the major oil companies have abandoned new exploration. The gas, from a previously unknown reservoir, flowed at rates estimated at 100 million cubic feet per day for two weeks. Water then began flowing with the gas, and eventually put out the flames; water from underneath gas or oil deposits commonly is pulled into an escaping stream when a well blows uncontrolled for long periods. The relief well was begun in mid-December, but efforts to stop the flow through the original well bore continued. Eight different attempts to "kill" the well using a device known as a "snubbing unit" failed in succession, and the relief well was chosen as the only viable option for stopping the blowout after the final attempt failed in mid-February. Shortly after the well began producing water, an elaborate oil/water/gas separator system was installed, with the water being trucked off and the gas flared. In March, workers succeeded in hooking up a line to capture the gas, and it has since been pumped to the Lost Hills oil field, about a mile away. the well has consistently produces an average of 10 million cubic feet of gas and more than 400 barrels of condensate for the past several months; the flow was restricted by the operations of the snubbing unit, or production would likely have been much higher. Now that the well has been conquered, plans are to turn the relief well into a producing well by cementing off the portion of the bore nearest the blown out well and then redrilling. A second well, to be drilled as a "step-out" development well, is slated to begin drilling in July. Another wildcat exploration attempt by many of the same companies is set to drill for the same promising rock structure beginning in about two weeks. The first well will be about 14 miles south of the east Lost Hills well, in an area that already produces natural gas, Cal Canal. The new attempt will target much deeper formations, however; two additional exploration wells are also part of that wildcat operation. Copyright© 1999, The Bakersfield Californian \| Email the Webmaster Associated Press Copyright Notice \| Privacy Policy Statement