Northern Petroleum says that in the Netherlands its wholly owned subsidiary Northern Petroleum Nederland B.V (NPN) has achieved success in hydraulically fracturing the main Carboniferous reservoir in the Grolloo gas field. The field is scheduled to be put on-stream in the fourth quarter of this year.

The subsequent gas flow tests which are scheduled to last five days have been interrupted to install a second flare stack for environmental considerations. This was also the case at the Brakel Gas field since flow rates in excess of 10 million cubic feet a day tend to emit high heat and noise levels as well as the high visible flare making the success obvious to the public.

Quantitative details of the test results will only be announced upon completion of current operations.

NPN is currently undertaking a six field development programme to bring into production proven and probable reserves of some 100 million barrels of oil equivalence of which 45.5 million barrels are net to Northern.

NPN is currently undertaking the hydraulic fracturing of the reservoirs in five wells scheduled to be put into production in the first phase of development from the existing wells. In the region there has been little application of hydraulic fracturing to enhance production rates other than at the Waalwijk gas field which is also under NPN’s management.

Derek Musgrove, Managing Director, Northern Petroleum Plc said, “This is our fourth successful hydraulic fracturing operation in the Netherlands. The previous three were successful with an outstanding result at Brakel. On this occasion we should allow ourselves to be optimistic that the operations at Grolloo will achieve comparable results. So far the results have been very encouraging but it is still necessary to await completion of the full test programme before formally accepting that the production flow rate potential has been upgraded. We are looking forward to having the Grolloo gas field in production before the end of the year.”

Tags: Northern Petroleum