Sorochynska
The Sorochynska project is located approximately 320km east of Kiev in the Poltava region of Ukraine, 3km to the west from Velyki Sorochynska village.
The area has a developed gas transportation infrastructure. Within 7km of the license is a new gas plant that is already connected to the main trunk line. There is gas processing infrastructure in close proximity to the license.
The license is an exploration license which includes the rights for pilot production (on a commercial basis) prior to obtaining a production license. The license terms are that geological studies are to be undertaken and one well is to be drilled within the license area. The Sorochynska project license 3003 (100 per cent owned) area size is 69.2km2 within areas B18b & B24/25.
The Sorochynska project is located on the southern slope of the Malosorochynsko-Radchenkivske structural zone in the central part of the Dnieper-Donets depression. It belongs to the Glynsko-Solokhyvske oil-and-gas bearing sub-basin. The Sorochynska field has at least two gas-bearing horizons which have been tested (B18b and B24/25) in the Visean sandstones of the Lower Carboniferous. The B18b reservoir is located on the northern slope of a monoclinal block. The reservoir is a stratigraphic pinchout, broken into separate tectonic blocks bounded by faults with amplitudes of 10-50m. Within the field, two wells (#469 and #110) produced 7.7bcf of gas and 227,000bbls of condensate. Both wells had mechanical failures.
Hawkley’s Sorochynska Well-201 is producing from the B18b reservoir in a fault-bounded trap located in the eastern part of the licence. Production commenced on February 17 and is presently running at 6.9MMscf/day of gas plus 200bbl/day of condensate.
Following the drilling and testing of Sorochynska Well-201, Hawkley commissioned an independent expert of the State Committee of Reserves of Ukraine to produce a simulation model of reservoir performance which predicts the recovery of approximately 46bcf of gas and approximately 1 million barrels of condensate assuming a three-well development, with production taking place over twenty years. Production was assumed to peak at between 8-10MMscf/day in the early years.
The success of Well-201 has indicated that the producible reserves in the trap could be several times larger than reported earlier, and Hawkley is proceeding to prepare a full-field development plan based on three producing wells.
In addition, Hawkley intends to carry out appraisal drilling in the west part of the licence, where old wells have discovered and flowed hydrocarbons from the B24/25 reservoirs. Official in-place resources booked by the Ukrainian State are 330bcf, and an independent report commissioned by Hawkley in 2009 arrived at an estimate of 320bcf. There is considerable uncertainty on the estimates because the wells were not tested for a sufficient length of time, and the discoveries were not appraised. Hawkley’s current priority is to generate revenue, and therefore the next well will be an infill development well into the B-18b reservoir already in production in Sorochynska. Appraisal drilling of the B24/25 reservoirs will be scheduled into the 2012 work programme.
