Thanks for that link szaba. It's pretty fascinating. It definitely suggests melting and then freezing of interstitial water is the likely culprit.
But there are still some unanswered questions, such as why didn't the methanol washing remove the ice blockages?
Also, why did the well start flowing initially if freezing water was the cause? The water would have re-frozen quickly after they fired the perforation charges, certainly before they could trip out of the hole and prepare it for a production test. So by that theory it shouldn't have flowed oil at all.
Likewise the cementing was obviously a bad idea because it introduced water and heat to the formation, but the perforations should have got past that freeze. Indeed, they must have got past that, because the well flowed initially.
At any rate, from that report, the USN apparently knew that the best way to drill Umiat vertically was to drill with either strong brine or oil-based mud to prevent melting formation water or introducing fresh water, followed by a barefoot completion.
For some reason LNC chose accept the oil-based mud part of the plan but not the barefoot completion. Which seems odd, but they must have had their reasons.
Something still doesn't add up here. But sometimes in this game, you just have to accept you don't understand what's going on and just go with what works. And what works here is barefoot completion!
LNC Price at posting:
$1.66 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
