Ann: March 2019 Quarterly Review, page-7

Good explanation of the issues with Surprise too. It doesn't look good. It mentions "some degree of recharge" - I would expect full pressure recharge after being shut in for four years, so there is obviously something going on. I can think of two possibilities, either or both of which might be contributing factors.

1) They have drained a small high permeability streak in the reservoir that they intersected during drilling, and the surrounding rock is too low permeability for oil to flow back and recharge it.

2) The mention of water influx may indicate there is now a relative permeability problem (water and oil don't mix and block each other in pore throats). It would explain why the well produced strongly during the EPT but then once it started to fall off, it fell off increasingly quickly.

On top of that, if there are new environmental regulations that mean restarting the well would incur significant costs, then it finally makes sense why they have deferred it. There's no point paying to restart it if you've got an issue like an oil-water rel perm problem hanging over you.

It's a shame as the field offered such promise - 10,000 bbls of oil produced in the EPT at ~300 bopd, minimal water cut, and a million barrels of 2P certified. Then it appears the water hit, and it all went downhill fast.