@longreach
I'm inclined to agree my friend and note that the min payzone the Cubans ascribe to anything in this area is 80m.. Ref Modelo Geologico Sur-Norte Bloque 9 Sub Type Trap Fig 3.
We don't know the weight of the oil yet so I'll temper expectation and assume a typ heavy crude as per Varadero (not accounting for increased pressure at A1) but that still gives a recovery value of between 7-12%
Also AP has consistently stated that there are a number of options available to them in order to increase flow & production life etc. The Cubans having become masters "at wringing the neck out of it" so to speak due to necessity. Por ejemplo;
Taking into account the most advanced research available, a practice was introduced in Cuba at the end of the 1990s that revolutionized the oil industry here: horizontal drilling. López explained that in a field where a vertical well produces 100 to 200 barrels a day, a horizontal well can extract 2,000 barrels in the same amount of time.
Logically, from this moment on, all Cuban wells were drilled horizontally or almost horizontally, although this is a more complicated process. Currently, the majority of these reach a length of over 6,000 meters.
Thus it was economically feasible for a barrel of crude, costing 13 to 14 USD to produce, to be sold at 30 USD, and to use almost all of the 75,000 barrels produced daily to generate electricity, meeting half of the country's demand for electrical energy.
Ninety-nine percent of Cuban oil comes from the Heavy Crude North Coast Field, which includes an area of 750 square kilometers between Havana and Varadero (Matanzas), and Cupet plans to continue exploring since estimates indicate that there are some 11 million more barrels available there, López explained.
Given that Cuban crude is heavy and of high-viscosity, only five to seven percent of the oil underground is extracted, a figure known as the "recovery coefficient."
Without projecting the use of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which raises serious environmental concerns, Cupet is beginning extraction of non-conventional resources, and the use of non-conventional techniques.
This includes recovery of dense crude oil in highly porous rock above oilfields, which has escaped the deeper reserves.
Along these lines, Cuba has begun to use thermal methods (injecting steam to reduce viscosity and increase fluidity) and multi-connection wells are being planned, where they do not threaten the water table.
Jorge Pinon, an expert on Cuban oil at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas in Austin, said, “They are shifting their focus and efforts to the known coastal reservoirs rather than on the unknown offshore deepwater reservoirs.”
Cuba’s heavy crude fields have a recovery factor of about 10 percent (10 barrels for every 100 barrels in a well), due to the viscosity of the crude and the porosity of the rock formations from which it is extracted, Pinon said.
“If successful, Cuba could increase its present recovery factor from 10 percent to maybe 17 to 20 percent adding an additional 12,000 to 15,000 barrels of new production if not more to their current level of approximately 50,000 barrels per day,” Pinon said.
The Northern Heavy Oil Trend (NHOT) is not an isolated phenomenon because it has a relationship to the Cuban Orogeny; similar trends can be discovered in other parts of the Northen Cuban Oil Province.
New 14 leads and 10 probable charged prospects have been identified and defined in the Northern Heavy Oil Trend (Figure 6). Those prospects are located offshore, 1 – 3 kms from the sea shore, and the most economic method used for exploring and the evaluation of the oild fields is the horizontal drilling. In recent horizontal wells the oil production is in between 1,500 – 4,000 barrells / day per well.
The horizontal drilling is the success response of the above mentioned researches and also because the wells were drilled towards the major fractures and karstified part of the reservoir.
Five of these 10 prospects were developed and four are new oil fields which are increasing the oil production in several times.
CONCLUSIONS
1) The applied methodology allowed to increase successfuly the oil exploration being responsible for definition of 14 leads and 10 prospects in the Northern Heavy Oil Trend.
2) Those prospects improved Cuban oil reserves in several times because they exhibit high density of oil in place and reserves.
3) Five prospects were explored, four of them discovered oil. The Cuban oil production increased several times due to horizontal drilling of the new wells which is the most economic method used for that purpose in those oil fields.
4) There are more prospects prepared for exploration. It is possible to increase the oil production in the near future finding oil fields as Varadero with 1 x 10³ millions barrels of oil in situ.
Only gotta drill 460 odd metres till we get first showing so not long now boys & girls... GLTAH h8tey
(20min delay)