PKN ORLEN completes work on its first horizontal well
PKN ORLEN has finished drilling a horizontal well in the village of Syczyn, Wierzbica licence area, in the Lublin region. Work on this second exploration well in the area took only 39 days. The next step on schedule is to perform hydraulic fracturing on the horizontal section of the well, the first such operation to be undertaken on a PKN ORLEN licence.
Work on the second exploration and appraisal well was completed in a record-short time – originally, drilling was to last 60 days but thanks to a precisely defined action plan the time was shortened to just 39 days. All work was done to the most exacting health, safety and environmental standards, and the best available drilling techniques were used. The well comprises a vertical section and a horizontal section. At Syczyn, the well was turned horizontal at the depth of 2,692 metres, and the length of the wellbore totals 4,100 metres, including the horizontal section of 1,100 metres.
PKN commenced its drilling operations at Syczyn back in late 2011. Three hundred metres of core samples were collected for analysis at the time. The shale was examined in terms of organic matter content and mechanical properties. The reservoir properties of the region's shale were also analysed in terms of porosity, permeability and crushability. The results of the analyses were promising enough to warrant a decision to continue the work and drill the Company's first horizontal well.
The next stage of the exploration and appraisal work will be to fracture the well and run a production test.
