Empire logs record depth in Western Haynesville play
Empire Petroleum announced the successful re-entry and subsurface evaluation of the Wakefield-Harrison GU B #1 well in the Fort Trinidad field, Madison County, Texas, on 16 August 2026. The company re-entered the wellbore, originally drilled in 1959, and underreamed and cleaned it out to 21,006 ft measured depth, or 20,949 ft true vertical depth.
Empire ran a full open-hole logging suite and recovered sidewall cores across the newly opened interval. Hydrocarbon shows, both gas and liquids, were recorded across the logged section, with C1 and C4-plus identified on the gas chromatograph. The well has not been completed or production tested, and no flow rate, reserve or resource estimate has been reported. The Fort Trinidad field was historically developed to roughly 10,000 ft; the Wakefield-Harrison GU B #1 opens approximately 11,000 ft of section below that depth.
The well forms the basis for Empire’s development strategy across the Intermediate Productive Zones and Deep Productive Zones of the Fort Trinidad field, which includes the Lower Glen Rose, Rodessa, James Lime, Pettet and Upper Travis Peak intervals, as well as the Lower Travis Peak, Cotton Valley Sand, Bossier and Haynesville intervals. Empire plans to use the well’s logs and core samples to reprocess existing 3D seismic data across its acreage position.
