ORLEN to drill ninth exploratory well
PKN ORLEN has spudded a new vertical exploratory well. The works are taking place in the municipality of Stoczek Łukowski, county of Łuków.
Stoczek-OU1 will be the Company's ninth well in the area of the 'Wodynie-Łuków' licence, which was acquired from ExxonMobil in 2012 and is located on the border between the Lublin and Warsaw provinces. The choice of the village of Kisielsk as the drilling location was based on an analysis of collected data and a number of local conditions. Consultation meetings with local residents and authorities were also held, in September and October, as part of the preparations paving the way for the project.
Drilling of the Stoczek OU-1 well will take about 50 days, to a planned target depth of 3,070 metres. Using a BENTEC 450T rig, core samples will be collected from the prospective rock layers and then sent to a laboratory for analysis. Based on the results, the Company will decide whether to proceed with further work in the licence area.
“We have been consistently implementing a programme of exploration works in our licence areas. Stoczek OU1 is our first exploratory well in the Podlasie Basin, which differs in terms of geological structure from the Lublin Basin, where most of our works have been performed to date,” said Wiesław Prugar, President of the ORLEN Upstream Management Board.
PKN ORLEN holds 10 licences for the exploration and appraisal of hydrocarbon deposits in Poland. So far, the Company has drilled eight wells and performed the first-ever full-scale hydraulic fracturing operation. Preparatory work is also currently under way on another fracturing operation, in the village of Berejów (commune of Niedźwiada, county of Lubartów).
