Reading Oil Reports

[Garpal Gumnut]

I'm looking for any articles or websites / links which have information on interpreting reports of drilling from oil companies.

Something along the lines of Oil reports for dummies.

Garpal

 

[doctorj]

I find this: http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/ to be a good resource. Is there a particular announcement you'd like help translating?

 

[spottygoose]

This is good also:

http://norwestenergy.com.au/index.php?section=19

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

I find this: http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/ to be a good resource. Is there a particular announcement you'd like help translating?

Thanks doctorj,

The most recent report on CVN drilling in Thailand. It refers to "lost circulation being an indicator of good reserves". This has me confused.

I'll upload the pdf.

Garpal

 

[doctorj]

Re: CVN - Carnarvon Petroleum

Can somebody explain the significance lost circulation and fractured resevoir in the above report as I'm not up to speed on oil reports

First things first, think about how a drill works. There are a variety of different bits (the thing on the end of the drill stem that does the work to geth thru the rock), but but essentially the bit grinds the rock. The ground rock then circulates back up to the top in the fluid/mud.

Rock isn't exactly going to retain fluids though and its natural that you'll always lose some of the fluid into the rock. Different types of rock will cause you to lose more or less fluid (eg. you wouldn't expect much loss drilling through shale).

Different types of rock have different porosity and permeability. Porosity is the ability of the rock to hold liquids (think of little pockets in the rock) and permeability is the ability for liquids to flow through the rock. Both are important for good reservoir quality.

When you drill through a target formation, you can often lose large amounts of fluid (depending on the ability of your mud engineer) into the fractures (think of them as sort of cracks that connect the pores in the rock together that helps fluid flow). This often suggests the rock has good permeability but losing mud into the fractures can often cause damage to the formation you might hope to produce from.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Thanks doctorj, answered my queries to the letter.
thanks spottygoose, I'll also add that to my bookmarks and print it out and read it. ( the latter the hardest).
A great board this for getting info quickly.
thanks guys.

Garpal

 

[jtb]

Hi Garpal,

Sorry I did reply to your query on the CVN thread but i see its not there (sometimes I'm a bit slow with typing and lose the link).

Just a bit more on what our good Dr has mentioned in regard to fractures. In volcanic faulted sections the fissures can be substantially larger than hairline and may well be broken ground or cavities.
As long as these are below the seal or cap than they can be an excellent reservoir in an oil wells sense as you basically have no restriction to flow once breached (hence cvn's recent high rates)- picture a large cave full of oil as opposed to porous limestone.

As the hatchet man mentions though from a drilling point of view they can be very hairy- particularly if you lose all return for very long (or if whoevers in charge of the injection wanders off).

Read bogged rods.

I was drilling for Metex years ago and had the hammer fall three metres before striking again (with a 1000 pounds of force on it) due to a cavity in a volcanic structure.
On checking the sample we had fallen through a quartz cavern of crystallized anomolies (the phallic crystals you buy in gem shops) luckily it mustn't have been faulted as I managed to get my return back with a heavy charge of polymer and a couple of thousand litres of water.

(can't have done much for something I'm sure was quite spectacular if you just could have got down to look at it)

If that wasn't the case she would have taken the whole string.

You'll see that POE/CVN have got a couple of holes where they've had to unscrew and just leave em there.

Who dares wins hey

 

[doctorj]

Interesting jtb - you spend some time on the rigs?

 

[jtb]

Interesting jtb - you spend some time on the rigs?

Yeah Doc, hence my bias to Fe, Au and oilers

Although I'd be a rich man today if I was of a Ni bias and bought real estate down at Ravey and Hopetoun when we were drilling for Comet resources years ago (prior to Billiton buying them out and then merging with BHP).
Ocean view blocks for 40K- but who would ever want to live down there
Made a packet out of Tectonic (pre RAV 8) but after a night in the pub

Funny isn't it, I find I usually buy stocks where I have first hand experience in the area or can visualise the structures!

I'd always thought chatrooms were for weirdo's until I stumbled across ASF one night at work after I'd made 12K in one day on GDN and wondered if anyone else was talking about it

I would have sounded like a first class ramper (if I'd known what that was at the time) with my first post saying that they were about to breach the leadville simply on an unscheduled bit change, but thought it was worth speculating on.

Have been learning ever since

Great site and sorry about padding out the post to Tech' the other day.

 

[doctorj]

Great site and sorry about padding out the post to Tech' the other day.

No worries, unfortunately the minority ruin it for the majority and make these kind of rules necessary. We understand the more often than not it's innocent but do what we can to enforce them all the same.

Forums are a good way to pool resources and ideas - while you do need to sort wheat from the chaff, there are a lot of very knowledgable people that post here in disguise - including MD's, Geos, CEO/CFOs etc.

You haven't done any drilling in the Canning Basin by any chance?

 

[jtb]

No worries, unfortunately the minority ruin it for the majority and make these kind of rules necessary. We understand the more often than not it's innocent but do what we can to enforce them all the same.

Forums are a good way to pool resources and ideas - while you do need to sort wheat from the chaff, there are a lot of very knowledgable people that post here in disguise - including MD's, Geos, CEO/CFOs etc.

You haven't done any drilling in the Canning Basin by any chance?

No sorry mate, but I did live on Koolan Island as a kid (about as cool as you can get when your a boy of 8,9 and 10 - except Bon Scott died ).
Stepfather was blasthole drilling.

Did you know Koolan had the longest golf hole in the world (was in the Guiness book of records and everything) it was the 3rd or 4th hole form memory and it was the airstrip:
Used to make a mint fishing golfballs out of the spinifex @ 20c a pop

Thats real iron ore up there.

No my Canning obsession stems from romping around out there as a tacker and then researching EGO 10 million years ago and the waiting five years for them not to drill it and expand their capital structure 3000% prior to farming down to ARQ

Got to hit the hay mate.

See ya

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Hi Garpal,

Sorry I did reply to your query on the CVN thread but i see its not there (sometimes I'm a bit slow with typing and lose the link).

Just a bit more on what our good Dr has mentioned in regard to fractures. In volcanic faulted sections the fissures can be substantially larger than hairline and may well be broken ground or cavities.
As long as these are below the seal or cap than they can be an excellent reservoir in an oil wells sense as you basically have no restriction to flow once breached (hence cvn's recent high rates)- picture a large cave full of oil as opposed to porous limestone.

As the hatchet man mentions though from a drilling point of view they can be very hairy- particularly if you lose all return for very long (or if whoevers in charge of the injection wanders off).

Read bogged rods.

I was drilling for Metex years ago and had the hammer fall three metres before striking again (with a 1000 pounds of force on it) due to a cavity in a volcanic structure.
On checking the sample we had fallen through a quartz cavern of crystallized anomolies (the phallic crystals you buy in gem shops) luckily it mustn't have been faulted as I managed to get my return back with a heavy charge of polymer and a couple of thousand litres of water.

(can't have done much for something I'm sure was quite spectacular if you just could have got down to look at it)

If that wasn't the case she would have taken the whole string.

You'll see that POE/CVN have got a couple of holes where they've had to unscrew and just leave em there.

Who dares wins hey

Thanks jtb,

That CVN report is all making more sense now.

Garpal

 

[Wysiwyg]

I`ve become skeptical over the years about oil company reporting because as most know at the end of the well it is a yes no or maybe.This resulting in big price swings.I feel compelled to help others that are going into a trade based on the oil companies projections.

I`m going to use a present example of a company that is changing direction from digital media technology.

DVM International Limited, (DVM, formerly Digital and Voice Media Limited) is a digital and media technology company that seek to capitalise on the growing market of point-of-sale indoor media advertising. The company's strategic focus is to develop an indoor electronic media advertising business through customised programming for retailers and advertisers

Australian’s latest onshore petroleum explorer, DVM International Limited (DVM), today told its shareholders that it wanted to capitalise on record global oil prices by participating in two high impact exploration wells in Western Australia.

Alright so now they want to be an oiler.Nothing wrong with diversification and good luck to them.Now to one of the wells that i think is exaggerated.

The second well, Lake MacLeod 1, had the potential to contain up to an estimated 150 million barrels of recoverable oil, if oil was present and the structure was filled to its maximum possible spill point.

I have yet to see any of these lill fellas turn up anything .150 million barrels.Riigghhhttt....Be lucky if they wet the drill bit in my opinion.

A 100 million barrel "recoverable" oilfield is rare and highly unlikely where they are drilling. They might get an oilshow.This from 2000 about the Southern Carnarvon Basin...(i went here in search of Quobba1)

BASIN AREA :- Onshore approximately 100 000km
WELLS :- 75 onshore (including 57 stratigraphic tests)
Only a few valid tests for hydrocarbon plays in the region. No fields or accumulations known at present.

Knowledge is invaluable !!!!! Now watch the share price rocket when they hit oil.

ref : www.doir.wa.gov.au/documents/mineralsandpetroleum/s_carnarvon.pdf