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Do the Maths: Parsing the Horse Hill Press Releases

By Steve Brown

14 April 2015 06:17

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The mainstream press and the bulletin boards are all of a tizz about a massive discovery of oil at Horse Hill in Sussex. The numbers are quite gargantuan. The BBC reports there could be 100 billion bbls of oil in place. Now do the real maths.

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Comments

DUCK AND DIVE

14 April 2015, 06:43

Excellent stuff, Steve. Would you mind running your slide rule over the Irish/American cousin, US Oil & Gas (USOP)?
Mark D

14 April 2015, 07:25

Very interesting article! A quick question, why are there no TOC percentages for the three limestone zones?
Steve Brown

14 April 2015, 07:52

TOC% (Total Organic Carbon) is a measure of the quality of source rock, the limestones are actually conventional reservoir rocks trapped in the source rock so the figure to look at for the limestones is the water saturation, take that percentage away from 100% and that tells you the oil saturation in the limestone.
Gary Newman

14 April 2015, 08:02

Steve,
Very interesting reading and confirms a lot of my own thoughts – you’ve gone into it in a lot more detail though.
From what I have seen mentioned the wells would be horizontal and targeting natural fractures and I’d be interested to see what sort of sustained production rates you would need from these to make them viable – I’m no expert on the costs but am guessing it is a lot more than drilling a load of holes and chucking in an ESP! Therefore flow rates would need to be higher.
Like you the reservoir pressure at such shallow depths is a concern – not to mention permeability/porosity etc. Plus of course the amount of water cut – wasn’t that what led to the decline in Wytch Farm production to some extent?

I’m not that familiar with the Russian play that you mention that is similar, but i think I’m right in saying that they get all sorts of tax breaks to make it viable to produce, otherwise it wouldn’t be under normal tax regimes?

As yet i remain to be convinced that it will even be commercially viable at current oil prices, let alone anywhere near the size that some are saying.

Gary
wildrides

14 April 2015, 11:10

Very informative an easy to assimilate ……….. great piece …….. cheers