I'm about...Regarding your question, it is probable that they...

I'm about...

Regarding your question, it is probable that they had major losses as soon as they hit the permeable zone.

They are saying that the mud (which i'd imagine was a cheap water based mud given total losses could be expected) could have washed the oil away from the wellbore and beyond the range (depth of investigation) of the LWD tools. If this happened and one of the density or neutron porosity tools had failed it would complicate the interpretation. If losses were total they may not have got any cuttings (or mud) returned to surface at all.

It is an absolute long shot (so unlikely that I wouldnt even mention it) that there was some oil and they will find it when they wireline. If that was the case however you would expect there to be some swapping of fluid once the mud dropprd to equilibrium in the riser and they would have seen oil or gas on top of the mud in the riser. There was no mention of this so I really dont think there is any hope.

As I said previously, it looks to me like there was oil in the tight limestone but they hit the water before encountering a permeable zone... It would appear from the depths given that there was substantially less than the claimed 300m of vertical closure - the result being that the water was higher than expected. I imagine that Nido expected fill to spill point, there must be a spill point that they didn't pick up on the 3D. It is a bit like trapping air in an upside down bucket under water and someone drilled a hole half way up the bucket - the air (oil/gas) column is then only half what you expected because it leaks at the highest spill point.

It will be interesting to hear the forward plan, I had said that as unpopular as it would be that I would have done a CR in the run up to this well, I can only assume that the board are/were comfortable that in a failure case that there was sufficient cash and income to continue.

p1000