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Permalink Reply by IRONFARMER on September 10, 2015 at 2:45pm

Horizontal wells planned by Cimarex and Chesapeake

 11 September 2015 00:00 GMT

Aubrey McClendon’s push into the Rogersville play in the US comes as major operators have unveiled plans to drill their first horizontal wells.

Cimarex Energy, using subsidiary Bruin Exploration, has received a permit to re-enter its Sylvia Young 1 vertical well to a depth of 15,571 feet and drill a 4800-foot horizontal.

Cimarex fractured and flow tested the Sylvia Young well last year, but was only forced to reveal the results of those tests last month when the state’s confidential status for the well expired.

The well flowed at a rate of 19 barrels per day of oil and 115,000 cubic feet per day of natural gas during initial testing on 6 May 2014.

Chesapeake received permission to re-enter its vertical Law 1 well to drill a 5100-foot lateral. The Law 1 well was drilled earlier this year as a stratigraphic test and the company did some initial fracture testing work on the probe earlier this summer. Both wells will be drilled in Lawrence County, Kentucky.

Once drilled, the probes will be just the second and third horizontal wells drilled in the play.

Appalachian giant EQT drilled and fractured the first Rogersville horizontal earlier this year in Johnson County but results from that well are being held confidential by Kentucky regulators.

However, EQT is one of the few players to have made any public comment on the Rogersville.

“I don’t think I would say it’s on hold, but with the lower price environment the bar for what innovations are necessary is obviously higher,” EQT chief executive David Porges said of his company’s efforts in the play. Porges’ comments, which were made at the Enercom conference in Denver, are among the few remarks any operator has made when asked about the play.

“I am kind of open to the idea of empowering our geoscience folks to figure out how we can extract hydrocarbons where we have existing rights and extract them so it creates value at today’s strip prices,” Porges said.

EQT is already one of the largest landholders in the Appalachian basin and has extensively developed shallow natural gas plays throughout the Rogersville trend.

Meanwhile, sources indicated that both Cimarex and Chesapeake had submitted applications for permits to drill additional horizontal wildcats in the play.

Officially, both wells are targeting the Rome formation, a carbonate that sits directly below the Rogersville shale.

Attachments:

• Horizontal wells planned by Cimarex and Chesapeake -Upstreamonline.pdf, 72 KB