The Ventura South Flank Prospect (16.50%, Paying 22% interest), Ventura Basin, California
The Ventura Avenue Field in Ventura County, California was originally discovered in 1919 and has since produced more than 900 million barrels of crude oil from over 800 successful wells. The Ventura Avenue Field boasts the highest concentration of oil per acre foot of any oil field in the world. Typical wells in the field have produced over 1 million barrels of oil with initial production rates of 400 to 500 barrels per day.
Despite the prospectivity, complicated land ownership has hindered exploration activity until now. The project area covers approximately 1,900 acres located one mile south of the producing Ventura Avenue Field
(100 km north of Los Angeles). Solimar Energy has negotiated a 16.50% working interest in this prospect.
The location of the prospect is geologically similar, yet separated from the Ventura Avenue Field by the east-west trending Ventura Fault. The Ventura Fault may provide a trapping mechanism for hydrocarbons. The related reservoir is believed to share many of the same characteristics as the reservoir present in the Ventura Avenue Field, making the prospect a high potential exploration opportunity. A recent reinterpretation of 2D seismic data appears to extend the earlier reservoir limits, due mainly to a favourable redefinition of the faulting structures, thus providing evidence of the necessary trapping mechanism for oil and gas reserves.
Testing of the objective will require a 12,000 ft well as a follow up to a well drilled in 1935, which had been overlooked for nearly seventy years until a recent technical review. A combination of antiquated drilling and completion practices, lack of modern equipment and technology, inadequate financing, and lack of operational expertise at this depth is believed to have led to the failure of this earlier well.
Following several failed completion attempts, it was abandoned in 1940 as attention shifted north to the overwhelming success at the Ventura Avenue Field.
An engineering and geological review suggests that approximately 807 ft of potential net pay existed in the 1935 well. Analog wells producing from similar geological intervals in neighbouring fields indicate initial production rates of between 470 and 3,700 barrels/day with a risk-adjusted expected initial production rate of 625 barrels/day.
Ventura South Flank Well
Solimar Energy together with its Joint Venture partners have concluded an evaluation of the data obtained in and around the Ventura South Flank oil and gas exploration prospect in the Ventura Basin, California. A 3D geological model has been evaluated. A new target location has been identified and a rig contract has been signed with Kenai Drilling to redrill the Ventura South Flank #1 well (SF#1). The rig is scheduled to be on location early in the third quarter of calendar 2008. The original prognosis of the Ventura South Flank prospect is that is has a potential recoverable resource of 10-20 million barrels of il and several billion cubic feet of gas.
The current redrill plan from the SF#1 well calls for kicking off the original well bore at 3.400 feet and drilling to a targeted depth of 10,610 feet. It will take approximately 29 days to reach total depth.
The recent evaluation included analysing the data from the recent drilling done by Solimar Energy and its partners in mid 2007 as well as the more recent data obtained from re-entering the old Walter Sexton well (WS#1) drilled in 1935. The recent evaluation included generating a 3-D geologic model which demonstrated the two SF#1 boreholes drilled in 2007 were apparently separated from the oil and gas reservoir described in the WS#1 well in the 1930’s by a combination of the faulting seen in the SF#1 well and the fault system identified in the seismic interpretation.
The re-entry of the 1935 WS#1 well was challenging but it provided extremely valuable data in determining the anticipated bottom hole location of the original 1935 well which had strong oil and gas indications that has now helped to identify the new drilling target. It is interesting to note that while the recent work was being undertaken in the old WS#1 well bore, evidence of oil and gas was observed which provides further encouragement for the re-drill.
