Ann: Preparations underway for start of Zapato-1 exploration well, page-93

In Da Hood,

In short a vertical well using high pressure casing, try to avoid deviations as this will help mitigate issues. A bigger rig may also be required. There might be room to talk to US operators who have such a rig, the US will work with Cuba on issues of energy security and safety.

The Alemada-1 well was quite deviated in order to intersect both deeper objectives. I suspect the deviation whilst designed to be a good exploration type design was drilled based on offset data on pressure regimes in Cuba. So the formation pressures were quite higher then expected and this resulted in the inability to safely flow test. Which implies each time they tried to open it up the pressure spiked and it was a struggle to bring it back under control.

I suspect the lower sheet targets will exhibit similar pressure regime issues. The next well is a single target well so it shouldn’t be as deviated, with a 1km vertical relief it’s another monster.