‘Abundance’ of gas pay at Black Sea well exceeds expectations

Canada’s oil and gas player Trillion Energy has drilled another well in its 2022 – 2023 drilling campaign on a natural gas field in the Black Sea off Türkiye. This well has identified multiple metres of potential gas pay.   

Once the Uranus jack-up rig, hired in May 2022, arrived at the Akçakoca platform, Trillion spudded its first well, South Akçakoca-2, in the drilling campaign on the SASB natural gas field in September 2022, identifying numerous potential gas zones on logging. The flow test results for the well were revealed in November 2022 and the company started the recompletion work on the second well – Akçakoca-3 – in its drilling programme for the shallow-water conventional gas field. 

After the well came on stream, the company announced the well’s flow test results. In addition, Trillion Energy reported that the Uranus rig was repositioned to drill the firm’s third and fourth wells in its SASB development programme. At the time, the Canadian player explained that the West Akçakoca-1 and Guluc-2 wells would be spudded a few weeks apart and completed in sequence. Come December 2022, the company spudded the Guluc-2 well, after completing the West Akçakoca-1 17 ½” diameter section to 1,008 metres depth. 

In an update on Thursday, 2 February 2023, Trillion Energy revealed the preliminary gas indications from the Guluc-2 well, elaborating that the well reached 3,910 metres total measured depth (TMD) and true vertical debt (TVD) of 1,623 metres on 26 January 2023, discovering “an abundance of gas pay.”

The Canadian firm claims that its analysis of the logging while drilling (LWD) results for the Guluc-2 well suggests 73 metres of potential natural gas pay within 14 separate sands in the Akçakoca Member within the SASB production zone. As outlined by the company, there are three sand gas reservoirs greater than nine metres thick each and the LWD-identified gas sands correlate with natural gas detected at the surface of drilling mud.

Arthur Halleran, CEO of Trillion, remarked: “We are now 3 for 3 drilling at SASB. The Guluc-2 well exceeded our expectations in gas-saturated potential pay with 73 metres, compared to only about 20 metres of gas pay discovered in the Guluc-1 exploration well drilled over 10 years ago. We are excited about flow testing the well and putting it into production next week, during a high-price gas environment.”

Furthermore, Trillion highlights that the initial perforation intervals are currently being selected to bring the well into production and only the lower zones of Guluc-2 are expected to be perforated initially. The Canadian player anticipates completion and flow testing to occur over the weekend, with results to be announced next week.

Moreover, the Guluc-2 well is expected to start generating revenue during the first week of February. Once the Guluc-2 well has been completed, the Uranus rig will skid to the West Akçakoca-1 well to drill it to TD.

Trillion Energy revealed in January 2023 that it would add three sidetrack wells to the development programme for the SASB gas field, increasing the total number of wells for this Black Sea drilling campaign from 17 to 20.

After the wells at the Akçakoca platform are completed, the Uranus rig will move to the East Ayazli tripod at the SASB field.