No.5 The well was shut in at 18:00 hrs on Sunday 5 th December after encountering an over-pressured gas zone above the primary objective.
Present activity is circulating 11.0ppg mud to enable resumption of drilling operations including running the contingent 9-5/8? casing string before drilling ahead to the primary objective.
No.6 MEO Australia Limited (ASX: MEO; OTC: MEOAY) advises that since the last progress report, the overpressured zone has been stabilised by circulating 11 ppg mud and an additional 40 metres has been drilled to 2,976m to enable the zone to be isolated behind 9-5/8? casing.
Ya posted this on Dec.6
Translation, Captain...
11 PPG = 1.32 gm/cc
Density of water = 1 gm/cc Density of gas = ~0.72 gm/cc (thats why its always gas, oil, H2O)
Get that last bit. Always oil, gas or water.
Wiki has this.
The downhole fluid pressures are controlled in modern wells through the balancing of the hydrostatic pressure provided by the mud used. Should the balance of the drilling mud pressure be incorrect then formation fluids (oil, natural gas and/or water) begin to flow into the wellbore and up the annulus (the space between the outside of the drill string and the walls of the open hole or the inside of the last casing string set), and/or inside the drill pipe. This is commonly called a kick. If the well is not shut in (common term for the closing of the blow-out preventer valves), a kick can quickly escalate into a blowout when the formation fluids reach the surface, especially when the influx contains gas that expands rapidly as it flows up the wellbore, further decreasing the effective weight of the fluid.
A kick can be the result of improper mud density control, an unexpected overpressured gas pocket. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_(well_drilling)#Reservoir_pressure
I think it's pretty clear it's a gas pocket. Question is, is it gas/or water.(no oil finds around us.) Would they be taking so much care with water? Mmmmm
So now we know that we have a seal. Not the seal we are targeting, but a seal non the less.
If you have not read nambo1's excellent post 6056334, I highly suggest you do. He is a mud engineer, and the mud engineer on the rig would have been the first to see the pressure build up. Here's some of it.
What normally happens is that the operator would request sampling of cuttings at shorter intervals in critical zones. Eg a physical sample and analysis of the cuttings every 2-5m rather than the usual 10m or 20m when drilling the surface hole. You therefore need to slow down the rate of instanteous drilling to ensure the cutting sample correlates better with the depth and to give the mud loggers and geologist time to look at the sample properly.
That means they would be testing the hell out of this unexpected section.
Next Wednesday's up date could be very interesting and may include a new gas find that we did not expect.
What did the market think of it? A 23% jump on the news. 36m shares traded. I guess the market thinks it's good news too.
If you start piecing this together, one can only conclude that the risk on this well has gone right down.
We have a trap and we more than likely have H/C be it above the section we are targeting. If you think people are selling, I'd like to point out that only 6m shares traded today. If you were the nervous type, you would not still be here . If you are still here, it's really looking like you might have pull this one right out of your....steel undies
Please note that I have just played a game of join the dots, and the above is just my opinion. But the picture I'm coming up with looks bloody great.
If I could buy more I would, but I can't fit many more in me steel undies. ;)
MEO Price at posting:
49.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held