SHOULD the oil to be drilled by March next year surpasses its projected levels, oil explorations company Galoc Production Co. (GPC) may expand the production of the Galoc oil field, Kay Palma, the company country manager, told reporters.

The Galoc oil field is expected to produce a low of 5 million barrels and high of 10 million barrels, which can take four years to drill.

Palma said it will take GPC six months to a year to determine whether there will be more reserves than what they project.

“But if the Galoc oil field will produce more than 10 million barrels, then we could possibly expand the project,” said Palma.

Jeff Davison, GPC chief operating officer, said: “GPC is delighted about the imminent commencement of the Galoc field development and the rapid progress is a testament to the progressive and cooperative nature of our Philippine partners, both public and private. We look forward to achieving oil production in the first quarter of 2008.”    

The project’s environmental management plan has received official public approval and NGO endorsement. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issued an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for the Galoc development in August 2006 and the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development issued a Strategic Environmental Plan Clearance in December 2006.

The first phase of the plan of development for the Galoc field involves the drilling of a deviated pilot well into the southern portion of the reservoir prior to the drilling of two horizontal production wells.

The Galoc wells will be drilled using a “batch” program whereby the top hole sections for both development wells will be drilled prior to the drilling of the pilot and horizontal development wells. Using this method, the project expects to make substantial time and cost savings over conventional drilling program.

Top-hole drilling for both wells is expected to take about 13 days in total.

The pilot well will then be drilled from the Galoc 4 well location and is expected to take about nine days to drill and complete. The pilot well is designed to confirm potential reserves in the southern sector of the field by evaluating the reservoir structure and quality in that area.

The pilot well program includes provision for the cutting of 54 meters of core, logging and collection of pressure measurements and samples of reservoir fluids. Once this work is concluded, the pilot well will be plugged back and sidetracked as the Galoc 4 horizontal production well.

The center of the Galoc structure where the Galoc 4 horizontal production well will be drilled contains the best quality reservoir intersected to date and is expected to be the most prolific producer with an initial production capacity in excess of 15,000 barrels per day.

During the approximately 20 days it will take to drill and complete Galoc 4, a detailed analysis of the data collected from the pilot hole will be completed by Nido and GPC.

The field reservoir models will be updated and the best location for the second horizontal producer (Galoc 3) in the southern part of the field will be selected. Galoc 3 is expected to take 24 days to drill, complete and test following which Galoc 4 will also be cleaned and tested.

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SHOULD the oil to be drilled by March next year surpasses its projected levels, oil explorations company Galoc Production Co. (GPC) may expand the production of the Galoc oil field, Kay Palma, the company country manager, told reporters.