Problematic well at D island

By Saule Tasboulatova

On D island at Kashagan the operation of one out of 12 oil-extracting wells remains questionable.

“Ak Zhaik” learnt this from informal sources. The well under question is well # 2. According to the source, in 2009 there were technical problems and in order to isolate bottomholeof the formation a special packer plug was installed.

- Since then they tried three times to remove the plug, but every time unsuccessfully. Most likely, the plug will stay there and the well will not be operable, - said the source.

According to oil industry workers, such plugs serve as some kind of safety valves to hold a high pressure that builds up to 850-900 atm. At bottomhole of the well. Currently all wells are ready for future production, kept under pressure, and plugged. Most likely that some additional measures were required to kill the problematic well# 2 during well completion operations.

Unfortunately, NCOC press service refused to provide comments.

However, to drill one post-salt well costs on average 70-100 million dollars.

Altogether at D island there have been drilled twelve 4 300-4 500 meters deep vertical oil-extracting wells. Each well is capable of producing on average 20-25 thousand barrels of oil per day.

Now there are five artificial islands at Kashagan: the largest one is D island and satellite islands - A, EPC-2; 3 and 4 (7-8 wells on each island). Currently four more islands are under construction and on each island there will also be 7-8 wells. In the next 10 years time there will be two more such big islands as D island. In total at Kashagan it is planned to build 30 artificial islands.

In general according to the field development plan it is scheduled to drill 281 wells, out of which 234 well be extracting ones  and 47 wells – injection ones (for maintaining reservoir pressure).