DEPARTMENTS • DRILLING & COMPLETION NEWS
Equinor and partners take
$9 billion decision to invest
in Brazil's BM-C-33 project
A second highly deviated deep well has been spudded as part of Utah FORGE's
continued efforts to commercially scale Enhanced Geothermal Systems tech-
nologies. Temperature at total depth is expected to reach 440°F.

Utah FORGE spuds 2nd highly deviated deep well
The Utah Frontier Observatory for
Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE),
funded by the US Department of Energy,
recently commenced the drilling of its
second highly deviated deep well . This
second well will serve as the produc-
tion well of a two-well doublet and will
mirror the existing injection well, which
was drilled between October 2020 and
February 2021. The new well will be
located approximately 300 ft from the
injection well.

Like the injection well, the upper part
of this well will be drilled vertically
through approximately 4,550 ft of sedi-
ments, at which point it will penetrate
into hard crystalline granite. At about
5,600 ft, the well will be gradually steered
at 5°/100 ft until it reaches an inclination
of 65° . The total length of the well will
be approximately 10,700 ft, with the toe
reaching a vertical depth of 8,265 ft. The
temperature at this depth will be 440°F.

“This is a crucial next step in the Utah
FORGE project’s goal of de-risking the
tools and technologies required for mak-
ing Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)
technologies commercially viable," said
Joseph Moore, Principal Investigator of
Utah FORGE. “ In the future, water will
be pumped into the injection well, travel
through the reservoir of tiny fractures
that we previously opened, absorb the
heat from the hard, hot crystalline gran-
ite, and then be pumped up through this
new production well to the surface ."
Once the well is completed, tests
will be run to continue facilitating the
development of the EGS reservoir and its
long-term connectivity. Additional tests
will also include determining the stress
conditions through short-term injection
experiments, during which microseis-
micity will be monitored.

BSEE tests subsea blowout preparedness with GOM drills
The US Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)
completed two unannounced drills in
May to evaluate the industry's prepared-
ness to respond to a subsea blowout.

Each drill lasted between three and five
days .

During the two drills, with Beacon
Offshore Energy and Chevron, each
company was required to deploy a cap-
ping stack from their respective storage
locations to separate areas in the Gulf of
8 Mexico . Once onsite, each operator low-
ered a capping stack onto a simulated
well head on the ocean floor in about
6,000 ft of water, connected the capping
stack to the wellhead, and pressurized
the system to 12,500 lb/sq in to simulate
well pressure.

BSEE said initial observations indi-
cate the drills met requirements for
deploying source control equipment but
will i ssue a formal report later this year
with a full evaluation .

Equinor , Repsol Sinopec Brasil and
Petrobras have taken the approximately
$9 billion investment decision to develop
the BM-C-33 project in Brazil.

Located in the Campos Basin, BM-C-33
comprises three pre-salt discoveries –
Pão de Açúcar, Gávea and Seat – contain-
ing natural gas and oil/condensate recov-
erable reserves surpassing 1 billion BOE.

The concept selected for BM-C-33 is
based on a floating production, storage
and offloating unit (FPSO) capable of pro-
cessing gas and oil/condensate and spec-
ifying these resources for sale without
a need for further onshore processing,
a first in the country. FPSO production
capacity will be 16 million cu m/day of gas ,
with startup planned for 2028.

The FPSO will be Equinor’s second in
Brazil using combined cycle gas turbines,
significantly reducing carbon emissions
during operations. The technology, which
will also be applied in Bacalhau in the
Santos Basin, combines a gas turbine with
a steam turbine to take advantage of the
excess heat that would otherwise be lost.

By implementing this technology, the
average CO 2 intensity of BM-C-33 over its
lifetime will be lower than 6 kg/BOE.

BM-C-33 is one of Brazil's main projects
to develop new supplies of domestic gas .

It's expected that gas exported from the
project could represent 15% of the total
Brazilian gas demand at startup. Its devel-
opment will also contribute to the coun-
try's economic development .

Neptune boosts production
from Adorf field in Germany
Neptune Energy announced first pro-
duction from its operated Adorf Z17 gas
well in the municipality of Georgsdorf
in northwestern Germany. The well is
expected to increase Neptune’s production
from the Adorf licence to around 6,300
BOED. Construction of a dedicated processing
plant at the site for treatment of the gas
was also completed earlier this year.

Drilling of another well, Adorf Z18,
reached a final depth of 4,773 m in April
and is due to begin production in Q3.

J U LY/AU G U ST 2023 • D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R