Also
@hardmano
Following the updated images in today’s presentation, please allow me to rephrase my thoughts on progress with SNE2 and SNE3:
It appears from the latest illustrations that SNE2 was indeed drilled to the west, where both blocky sands were likely to be (and presumably were) encountered. If so, it is also likely that the
uppermost thin sands were lost to the gas leg at that location, so at SNE2 only the "lower section of the total thin sand section" would have been available for testing. These then would be the sands that returned the rather disappointing (to me) net pay of only 3.5m from the 15m total pay tested.
In my spreadsheet suppositions for the Jan 2016 update, I already stated the above as the most likely outcome for SNE2 and now consider this confirmed. In terms of resource revisions as a result of SNE2 (from any base), my tentative conclusions were that while the very high flow rates obtained from the blocky sands may have upgraded the blocky sand resource to the west, the lower than expected thin sand net pay might have had at least some negative implications across the central east of the structure.
However, as I have previously indicated, the main sands to be tested at SNE3 are not the same as those tested at SNE2. The sands to be tested at SNE3 are the
uppermost thin oil leg sands and
the gas sands where they dip into the oil leg around the periphery. It is not likely that these sands were tested at SNE2 and it is very possible that they will show much better net pay and productivity than the thin sands tested at SNE3. In fact Cairn in one of their presentations indicate high porosity and permeability characteristics were evident for the “top thin sands”.
And if all that turned out to be the case, then perhaps we might re-summarize the field areally as: “very high productivity over the west part of the structure, lower productivity for much of the central east, and then, perhaps counter intuitively, higher productivity again around the peripheral areas (hopefully S,E and North!).
Trouble is, in terms of estimates of peripheral area, there is still a huge discrepancy in between the oil water contact indicated on FAR’s areal images and that indicated on their cross-sectional artistic seismic (and also that of Cairn’s areal images).
Suffice it to say, though, that like the margins around the page of a book, the peripheral areas are potentially relatively large. However, compared with the thick blocky sands to the west, any development of a relatively thin but large productive area around the periphery would surely have to come at the expense of much lower efficiency ratings? And I don’t know what the effect of the latter might be on getting contingent resources converted to your actual "recoverable reserves" – a lot would be dependent on the oil price I would imagine.
Just my thoughts
pj
(20min delay)