UK Oil & Gas Investments Plc (LON:UKOG) has detailed a new drill programme, which will be the latest well that will attempt to recreate the success of the Horse Hill project, located near Gatwick airport.
The planned Broadford Bridge-1 exploration well, in licence PEDL234, is some 17 kilometres from the Horse Hill site, and it is scheduled to be drilled in the first half of 2017.
Broadford Bridge-1 will test the same type of naturally-fractured Kimmeridge Limestone reservoirs as Horse Hill.
Nutech, the American petroleum consultant that estimated Horse Hill’s billion barrel potential, has also assessed Broadford Bridge and has said that this project may have some 7.12bn barrels of oil-in-place within the Kimmeridge hybrid play (including clays).
The US consultant detailed that some 1.7bn barrels of that figure lies within the limestones.
At UKOG’s 31.2% owned Horse Hill the Kimmeridge limestones yielded a test production rate of 1,365 barrels per day. Drilling and testing of Broadford Bridge could be a significant step in establishing whether Horse Hill was a one-off success or whether it is only one of potentially many lucrative new project’s in the UK’s Weald basin.
Other wells, operated by other participants in 2015’s Horse Hill well, have a similar aim.
For example, Europa Oil & Gas Plc (LON:EOG) and UKOG are working together on the Holmwood well, while Angus Energy Plc (LON:ANGS) is planning a well at the nearby Brockham field.
In today’s statement UKOG chief executive Stephen Sanderson said: “The BB-1 well is designed not only to test a geological mirror-image of the Horse Hill Kimmeridge oil discovery, but, more significantly, to also seek to establish whether Kimmeridge Limestone oil is truly an extensive resource play.
Sanderson highlighted that the Nutech analysis of Broadford Bridge underpins UKOG’s rationale for the upcoming drilling and its Horse Hill follow up strategy.
At Horse Hill, meanwhile, further drilling and testing is planned to further de-risk a field development and set-up the initial infrastructure for a potentially lucrative asset.
“Our wider strategy over the forthcoming 18-24 months aims to de-risk the overall Kimmeridge Limestone oil play, both commercially and geographically,” Sanderson said.
“Through the planned extended production testing, sidetrack and new well at Horse Hill, the goal is to establish that the Kimmeridge can be brought into commercial production.
“In parallel, our three-well exploration programme of BB-1, Holmwood-1 and an additional PEDL234 well, also aims to demonstrate that Horse Hill success can be replicated over the central "sweet-spot" of the Weald Basin.”