Prairie Provident Resources Inc. (“Prairie Provident” or the “Company”) provides an operational update on its drilling program in its Princess and Michichi areas.
The Company successfully drilled and completed one Ellerslie multi-leg open hole horizontal well, 102/03-24-018-11W4M, in its Princess core area.
Production continues to increase as the well cleans up. Latest daily production was approximately 290 boe/d (185 bbl/d of heavy oil) based on field estimates at the wellhead. To date, initial production from 102/03-24-018-11W4M has been constrained due to limitations on the natural gas takeaway volumes. We expect the flush natural gas production to decline in the near term and as such, natural gas takeaway will not be an issue in the future.
At Princess, the Company installed and commissioned a water disposal facility at 10-23-018-11W4M. Included in this project was the tie-in of the 102/10-23-018-11W4M Pekisko water disposal well. The Company expects annual area operating cost savings of approximately $600,000 from this project, by eliminating produced water trucking and third-party water disposal charges.
At Michichi, two one-mile Basal Quartz horizontal wells were drilled off the 4-31-30-18W4M surface pad site at 03-30-30-18W4M and 02-30-30-18W4M. Both wells encountered high quality Basal Quartz reservoir as evidenced by the geological strip logs. However, production casing failures occurred during the primary cementing operations at both wells. Downhole camera visualizations show casing shearing/deformation at similar depths on a casing collar. The Company is still investigating but believes these are separate events that may have been caused by an oblique slip in a system of critically stressed sub-seismic faults triggered by geo-mechanical factors.
In the Michichi/Drumheller area, Prairie Provident has adhered to the standard offset well drilling design for single leg cased-hole Basal Quartz horizontal wells. The Company believes the 03-30-30-18W4M and 02-30-30-18W4M wells are unlikely to be salvageable in their current configuration. The Company is currently assessing the impact of these geo-mechanical events on its future drilling design in the Michichi area and will provide operational updates regarding future Basal Quartz development.