Natural Gas: what if the solution to the European crisis was in its very bowels?
The Californian geologist James Hill, now CEO of MCF Energy, claims to be able to solve part of the problems of the energy transition in Europe with natural gas from deposits in Austria and Germany discovered, forgotten and now re-evaluated, but with completely new techniques and different.
“Not only has Europe been dependent on Russian gas for decades, but this dependence has essentially plundered the continent's ability to produce domestically, onshore,” “This means Europe now has to import high-priced LNG from the United States, Russia, Qatar and Australia to make up the shortfall,” he adds, “when previous discoveries are just waiting to be reopened in places like Germany and Austria.”
Forgotten reserves
With large-scale exploration projects in Germany and Austria and a recent 100% acquisition of Genexco GmbH Germany, MCF Energy just started drilling last month in Austria and will then move the drilling rig directly to Germany in April.
In Austria, MCF has started drilling in the Welchau prospecting area and in its latest press release (11 March 2024) announced the discovery of an active oil system and that the full depth will be reached by the end of the month. The Welchau prospect is analogous to large anticlinal structures discovered in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Italian Apennines, and is also adjacent to an upwelling from a discovery that has intersected a gas column of at least 400 meters, testing pipeline-quality gas rich in condensate.
All elements are in place for a significant discovery, with a best-estimated prospective technical resource of 16 billion cubic meters of gas with 10.1 MBO, proximity to the national pipeline system (~18 km), and a landmark discovery of gas nearby. Welchau is targeting the same deposits as the nearby Molln-1 well, which detected gas in 1989.
After Austria, Germany
The next step will be drilling of the Lech prospects in southern Germany in April, which MCF considers its highest impact activity.
The concessions of Lech (10 square kilometers) and Lech East (100 square kilometers) contain natural riches that have already seen two discoveries and three previous wells.
In April, MCF will re-enter Mobil's former Kinsau #1 well in Lech, adapting new drilling technology and possibly horizontal wells to stimulate existing hydrocarbons. In the 1980s, Mobil established production rates of over 24 MMCF per day of natural gas with associated condensate from the Kinsau #1 well. Mobil was exploring for oil and never developed the gas discovery.
This well, being an indentation of a previously tested and drilled hole, could result in rapid cash flow for MCF Energy and a single shot could expand into multiple development zones for each well.
“From a risk perspective, this is the lowest risk you can have,” Hill said, “you can't go wrong because we're re-entering a well drilled in the 1980s that has produced gas and condensate at rates currently very high. cheap. Additionally, we have a second well with an oil patch that, in '83, was producing almost 200 barrels a day from a vertical well. What happens if we insert a horizontal well in that area? Today the technology has improved dramatically over the last 40 years, we hope to do much better than what Mobil did in stimulating production from these wells. We know where the hydrocarbons are and AI and machine learning have confirmed this, giving us a model for many more future wells at Lech East.”
Excavations 1983 in Lech – Kinsau
According to Hill, within the first fault block at Lech, from the enormous flow rates of these wells, there are likely to be significant gas reserves with associated condensate. Furthermore, the infrastructure is already there, with a pipeline connection less than two kilometers away, meaning the potential for rapid cash flow.
Will this be the gas for the energy transition?
MCF's bet is to find capital and resources capable of making these old deposits profitable with new extraction techniques, especially with the use of new horizontal drilling wells which allow the area of underground exploitation to be expanded, in a very different from what happened in the 70s and 80s when many of these explorations were done.
Horizontal drilling
If MCF then managed to interest a large European oil company, such as ENI or Toal, it would have made a big splash, and perhaps we would too.
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The article Natural Gas: what if the solution to the European crisis was in its very bowels? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gas-naturale-se-la-soluzione-alla-crisi-europea-fosse-nelle-sue-stesse-viscere/ on Wed, 13 Mar 2024 20:05:22 +0000.