RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:AGM
To use coiled tubing now would involve swapping out the entire rig, and I am not sure there is a coiled tubing rig in New Zealand that could do the job. That would be very expensive and I doubt that is an option for Cardiff 3 The thickness of the coal seam will have a lot to do will the difficulty of drilling through it, the thicker the seam the more difficulty getting the mud to seal the coal seam. Most of the time when drill pipe get stuck in coal it is due to swelling of the coal seam, you must work the pipe through the seam until the drilling mud does it's work and seals the formation. Formation collapsing on the drill string will add to your problems, but again , a proper mud system will seal all formations and prevent that problem Another method Tag could try would be drilling with casing. Basically put a special bit on casing and drill ahead. Once you get to desired depth, set the casing and then drill out through the special bit to complete the well. This would also be expensive, but may work. Cardiff3 is not going to be an easy well to drill or complete and Tag could easily spend $30-40mm and still have nothing. They will still need to drill through the same problem formations on the sidetrack with no guarantees that things will go better the second time. There is a huge difference between having Tag's executives stand in front of a meeting and talk about how Tag is going to drill a challenging well and actually doing it. Anyone can say all the right things, it is a lot tougher to do. Look at this history of this play. Tag has done much talking about the reward of this play, now Tag is living the risk. I have no knowledge of Tag's drilling operations at Cardiff3 other than the very limited amount available to all of us, so my comments are very general and should not be taken as gospel. Every well is different. It could be that a driller wasn't paying attention and this problem was caused by a simple operational error that can be eliminated on the sidetrack, lets hope so.