Re water and the risk of wells suddenly watering out: Yes the...

Re water and the risk of wells suddenly watering out:

Yes the water is a constant and unpredictable risk with respect to the fracture-porosity and permeability in the volcanic reservoirs. You may hit a decent sized set of fractures that contain and flow significant quantities of oil, but you have no idea of the extent or orientation of those fractures, or of the depth to the oil/water interface in each individual fracture. All you can do is keep pumping and hope you are not pumping so hard that you will rapidly suck the thin, free-flowing water up through the heavy, viscous, slow-moving oil, which eventually you inevitably will.

However, watering out is nothing like such a risk in the sandstone reservoirs that are being targeted in L20/50 and at Wichian Buri Extended. Once you have established the presence of oil in a sandstone unit, and have sufficient permeability in the sandstone for that oil to flow into the well, then you can just keep on producing oil until you have depleted the reservoir at that level of recoverability. The depth at which you find the oil has no bearing on the chances of water influx.

The major advantages with the sandstones are:

1. Oil flow tends to be lateral or gently up dip, within the permeable, oil-saturated reservoir unit

(whereas most of the flow in fractured volcanics is up sub-vertical fractures, leading directly up from the underlying oil/water interface).

2. Once located, individual, permable sandstone reservoirs can be clearly mapped on seismic imagery, and trap structure and the position of the oil water contact can be modelled. Production can then be planned accordingly

(whereas although the volcanic units can be mapped on seismic, the permeable 'reservoir' sections and fractures that create these cannot actually be distinguished: hence the complete unpredictability of individual well results and the constant surprises with water influx)

3. Oil flows are naturally slower through sandstone reservoirs, so the temptation to pump the hell out of the reservoir in a desperate effort to maintain production figures is not there.


With regard to so-called 'ramping', nothing that is said in this little chat room about a stock with the market capitalisation of CVN could have any effect at all on its share price. If I though that it could, as a buyer, I wouldn't be commenting at all!

(Or perhaps I would be screaming 'BUY!', knowing that the paranoid and innately dishonest, imagining that I was as twisted as them, would immediately sell).

It's all just fun..