Valiant Petroleum Plc (Valiant Petroleum) has provided an update on the West Don and Don Southwest fields (together the Don fields). The second production well on West Don (Valiant Petroleum, 17.275%), located in blocks 211/18a West Don area and 211/13b (License P236 and P1200 respectively) in the UK North Sea, began production at the end of last week. Start-up flow rates have been in line with expectations.
The water injection well has now been completed and will be ready to begin pressure support in the coming weeks.
The first production well on West Don has been producing at a gross rate of around 6,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) having experienced a steeper decline than was initially expected at the time of field development plan submission. The performance is, in part, a result of the delay to pressure support from the water injection well. Production from the well has now been stable for some time and the partners believe that the imminent start-up of the water injection well will support production rates along with improved uptime on the Northern Producer. Based on the limited reservoir information gathered so far, the potential for a third production well in the south of the field is currently under consideration by the field partners.
Don Southwest
Following the recent announcement of first oil from Don Southwest (Valiant Petroleum, 40%), located in Block 211/18a (License P236), Valiant Petroleum announced that a successful side-track from the Area 5 injector well has been drilled into a newly identified Horst section proving up additional oil volumes. The Horst is a structural high between Areas 5 and 6 and has excellent reservoir quality with high oil saturations giving internal estimates of gross recoverable reserves of around seven million barrels of oil. Development of the Horst is now likely to take precedence over Area 6 in the completion of the first phase of the development programme in 2010.
Following this, a second development phase is being planned which will include Area 6 as well as the recently discovered ‘H’ Panel on which Valiant Petroleum has placed preliminary internal gross recoverable resources of around nine million barrels of oil.
While production potential has been demonstrated to be high from Don Southwest, actual production is currently limited to the Area 5 well which is currently producing at gross rates of around 12,000-14,000 bopd, with actual average production rates constrained by facilities uptime and shuttle tanker offloading schedules.
The area 22 production well to the south of the field has a completion blockage and the well is shut-in until gas lift can be delivered from the Northern Producer in a few weeks time or an intervention is undertaken at the end of the current phase of drilling in September 2009. The water injection wells in both Area 5 and 22 are anticipated to be on-stream during September 2009, slightly ahead of schedule.