NPC Announces Increased Oil Production in Shukheir

The National Petroleum Company (NPC), Citadel Capital’s upstream oil and gas business, has undertaken operations on its Shukheir Bay-5 ST well, which was drilled in June 2006. NPC has lease rights on the 40-square-kilometer development lease, which is located approximately 125 kilometers north of Hurghada on the western coast of the Red Sea.

The concession operator, Offshore Shukheir Petroleum Co. Ltd. (OSOCO), a joint venture company of NPC’s Petzed Investment and Project Management Ltd. and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), performed a non-rig well intervention on November 9, 2009, adding 7 meters of new perforations in the Lower Rudeis sandstone.

The well had been previously producing at a stabilized rate of 60 BOPD on artificial lift from one set of perforations in the Upper Rudeis sandstone. Cumulative production to date from the Upper Rudeis was 0.288 million barrels of oil (MMBO).

Shukheir Bay-5 ST now has a total of 17 meters of perforations naturally producing 1600 BOPD and 3.6 million standard cubic feet per day (MMSCFD) of gas on a 40/64? production choke. The well has produced approximately 24,000 barrels cumulative of new oil to-date since November, 9, 2009.

Production from Shukheir Bay-5 ST will continue to be monitored over the coming period to confirm productivity, sustainability and a potential increase in reserves.

The increase in oil production from this brown field follows a major focus to revive production through applied reservoir engineering and the use of modern cased hole logs that help identify potential bypassed oil.

This success potentially opens other opportunities to access bypassed oil by adding additional perforation intervals in other existing wells or by sidetracking existing wells to new bottom hole locations in the Shukheir Bay field. An offset well on the lease, Shukheir Bay-1, has produced over 5.4 MMBO from the Lower Rudeis Formation.