RE:RE:wildcatter...other options?You are right that the TXP story is discovery driven, abd we wilkl get new data soon on two additional wells.
The other difference is that these TXP discovery wells are conventional wells with reservoirs of overpressurized natural gas in sand sheets capped by good seals. The 10mmcf shale wells in the Montney will produce at high level for a few months and even the best will have exponential decay of production. To keep production flat will require and ongoing drilling program. And the wells are releatively expensive with long laterals that have to be intensely fracked.
As for the TXP wells, one vertical straw will drain Coho for 10-15 years or more. 4 -8 vertical straws will drain Cascadura and produce at pretty good rate for 10-15 years and more. Wells are cheaper and no additional wells are needed after they get on production. The Central block gas field to the south and west is owned by Shell and is still producing at 50% of initial rate after more than 20 years.
Information on the Chinook disocvery well will be available in weeks. (The Cascadura Deep well is really on extension of the original Cascadura well, only 900 feet away and has already shown extremely high pressure gas flowing to the surface during drilling - so no surprises are expected there). Chinook a a deeper and broader structure, much bigger in area than Cascadura. The results will be totally exciting. And will be available soon, in weeks, maybe even March 10, at least partial results then.
Chinook well is testing three pay zones. I kind of hope we get them altogether because he lowest one is a wildcard and may or may not be exciting.
The first target in Gr7a section of Herrera (still plenty deep as this a broader flat structure rather than the taller structure at Cascadura) is 341 feet of pay between 8154 and 8710.
The secondary target in Gr7bc section is 180 feet of pay. Both these targets were supported by old data from the BW-7X well.
The Chinook well was supposed to stop at 9830 feet. But they ran into another hydrocarbon bearing sand, also in Grbc7 section. They had not expected to find this and decided to continue deeper. They discovered another 68 feet of net pay between 9750 and 10003. That is the deepest well onshore Trinidad in over a decade.
So flow rates on this lowest and deepest section (and not suspected) zone will be interesting but might not have any bearing on productivity of higher targets 1 and 2.
None of these zones were hugely over pressurized and kicked back gas to surface as happened at both Cascadura well. They did use a synthetic oil based mud system after that initial experience at Cascadura1-ST and apparently had no problems with handling the pressures at Chinook. However when they went back to Cascadura Deep the same thing happened which made them realize that really had to get that bigger rig going.
It is fortunate they salvaged the well bores at the two Cascadura wells (even though they had to stop drilling early in both cases) because TXP story would not be nearly as advanced as it is and we probably also would not have been able to negotiate the NGC contract.