Noble Drives Down Leviathan Well Costs
Wednesday 15 March 2017
Noble Energy has lined up another appraisal well at its Leviathan gas discovery off Israel as it looks to save costs by drilling two probes back-to-back with the same rig.
The US independent is set to spud the Leviathan-7 development well within weeks, once the drillship Atwood Advantage is done drilling the Tamar 8 development and production well in the Tamar gas field, also off Israel.
The rig will start off with the Leviathan-7 well before finishing the Leviathan-5 appraisal and then returning to finish the former, local block partner Delek Drilling said.
Both wells are to target the Oligo-Miocene layers and drilling of the two combined is set to take around seven months – although excluding completion costs.
The total budget for both wells is around $71 million, which Delek said is included in the overall field development budget recently agreed after all the partners finally signed off on the final investment decision (FID) for the first phase last month.
When the partners said in December that they were to drill Leviathan-5, the expected well costs was put at $77 million.
The Atwood Advantage will first drill the top portion of Leviathan-7 to around 2900 metres before heading to Leviathan-5 and drilling it to total depth of around 5200 metres. Then the unit will head back to Leviathan-7 and drill it to total depth of 5100 metres.
Leviathan-7 sits in some 1630 metres of water in the Leviathan South I/14 lease in around 120 kilometres off the coast of Haifa.
Delek said the decision to press ahead with the latest appraisal was to “streamline and reduce the cost of the drilling of these two wells”.
First steel was cut on the Leviathan project earlier this month after the $3.75 billion first phase FID. Wood Group revealed recently it had started detailed engineering on the field's platform which will be built by Kiewit Offshore Services.
It was recently reported that Noble and its partners are finalising major contracts for the project, with OneSubsea understood to be in pole position to win the subsea production system contract.
Leviathan is being developed via deep-water subsea wells sending gas to the shallow-water platform, which will be installed in a water depth of 86 metres.
Leviathan is estimated to hold 34 trillion cubic feet of gas in place and first gas is expected in 2019.
Noble has a 39.75% working interest in Leviathan, with local partners Delek on 22.67%, Avner Oil on 22.67% and Ratio Oil on 15%.