Turner Valley Update.The Turner Valley oil well has a three-phase pipeline (able to transport sour oil, gas and water) that is tied into Devon’s oil battery, which is approximately 4.5 kilometres away from the well. The rig was released over 2 weeks ago and have had the well pumping out both the fresh water that they introduced into the well and formation and which they have now recovered and the saline formation water which they began producing 1 ½ weeks ago.
Since the rig was released until last Thursday they have been continually testing the well and have been trucking the produced water three times a day from Turner Valley to Claresholm, Alberta where it is disposed. They are now producing only formation water Devon has agreed to test and process the fluids from the well and on July 29th, 2010 they tied into the existing pipeline to the Devon plant. The whole Devon plant coincidently went down also last Thursday just as they were to initiate production down the pipeline due to a lighting storm but everything was repaired Sunday night and early yesterday morning they began producing formation water and in the last 24 hours produced approximately 6 barrels of oil and some natural gas and are producing approximately 500 barrels a day of fluid through the pipeline to the Devon battery.
They initially pumped in over 4000 barrels of fresh water into the well and formation and there is still a lot of formation water to recover that has moved into the formation from the water coming from the fault since the well was shut-in several years ago and which has displaced the oil so they expect to be pumping water for another 2 weeks before they are able to really get a head of it and have good oil production and cut. They believe from the testing of the packer that it has successfully sealed the fault but are dealing with an open hole completion in the horizontal leg of the well which has good formation permeability of between 7 – 9 percent so they know that a lot of water has entered the formation around the 100 + meters of wellbore that they are producing and that they still have to recover.
For your information, they produce the oil, gas and water to the Devon battery where all three are separated immediately, Devon disposes of the water, stores the oil for shipping to a refinery and the natural gas from there transported to the Imperial Quirk Creek gas plant.
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