What the announcement means

[sageo]

Back on Sept. 30th they were preparing to set 7” casing at the top of the pay zone at Raptor-1. So now they have set their 7” casing and cemented it in place and drilled ahead in the pay zone for 200 meters (656 feet), probably with a 6” bit,  and have run logs. They say the logs indicate the presence of hydrocarbons. In these highly resistive limestone zones the logs are not very good if the porosity is low as we saw at the bottom section of Triceratops-2. The higher the porosity is the better will be the quality of the log data. We don’t know if they took any cores but it is probably likely so they should have some additional data in addition to the logs. Also the mud logs and cuttings analysis will provide some additional insight as to what we might expect. If they found good porosity at the top of the zone like  we did at Antelope then the testing should be definitive as to type of hydrocarbon, flow rate and reservoir quality. If the formation is low porosity with some fractures we could still get a high flow rate, particularly if it is gas.

It is not necessarily true that we are through drilling at Raptor because we are planning to test. They did not say they are running another liner. They could set a packer inside the 7” casing and test the entire 656 feet of open hole. The limestone should be much thicker than 200 meters and they probably do not know if they have yet penetrated the gas or oil/water contact. If they test the open hole interval and find hydrocarbons with no water they will drill ahead. Eventually they will log again and run a 5” liner. Hopefully they will be through the pay zone at that time and they will then proceed to test the lower zones inside the 5” liner to evaluate various zones and locate the gas or oil/water contact if one is present.

As we see at Bobcat-1 they have set a 5” liner and plan to drill ahead into the pay zone below the 5” liner. This means they will be using something like a 3 7/8” - 4 1/8” bit. A very small hole but big enough to evaluate the reservoir. This is about the size hole we used at Antelope-2 for the two horizontal holes. I am not going to go back and look but I think we drilled up to 3,000 feet+ of 4” hole. Now that we are through the shale and have it behind casing we should be able to keep the hole open and complete the evaluation of the reservoir in a reasonable period of time.

   Thanks Pet for your fine post. Have a nice evening.

[Putncalls]

Thank you petengr.
This may not be material "enough" for others though. I think positive results change the statistics and MY personal model. Bobcat seems to have dug itself "out of a hole". It's now a little hole but it's big enough to do the job. This now puts two bits in the possible pay zone. I guess there is only one question left.

It's material to me.