Northern Petroleum Plc says that its wholly owned subsidiary, Northern Petroleum Nederland BV, has contracted services for a well service programme commencing in early November to make subsurface preparations to five wells for full production. This is being undertaken prior to delivery and installation of facilities. Additionally, Schlumberger Oilfield Services has been contracted to conduct an hydraulic fracture programme to the five wells at the same time.

Northern remains on track to meet its production target of gross initial production of 4670 boepd next year and should the fracture campaign be as successful as forecast, Northern would be positioned to exceed this target subject to timing of remaining planning permissions.

Detailed fracture design modelling on the wells has been carried out by industry specialists, Fracture Technologies Ltd., who designed the successful fracture programmes for the Waalwijk gas field wells. The Waalwijk reservoirsare directly analogous to the Wijk en Aalburg, Brakel and Ottoland reservoirs and were very successfully fractured improving production rates by a factor of two to three. The Carboniferous reservoirs as seen in Geesbrug and Grolloo have also undergone successful hydraulic fracturing in the offshore portion of the Southern North Sea Gas Basin.

The hydraulic fracture design modelling predicts similar improvements to Northern’s wells. The first well in the sequence is Wijk en Aalburg, where the studies indicate that the initial production rate can be increased by up to 18 mmscf/d from the presently proven rate of 5 mmscf/d established in previous production tests.

Tags: Northern Petroleum