Romania: Zeta's Bobocu Well to Restart Field Production

Australian-listed Zeta Petroleum has said that it will spud its first well on the Bobocu well in Romania in the third week of this month, 17 years after production first ceased on the field.

The well, which has governmental and environmental approvement from the Romanian government, will seek to restart production on Bobocu well in the Buzau valley in Romania.

The field, which was previously operated by largely state-owned Romgaz, was first put into production in 1977 having been discovered by Romgaz in 1966. At its peak, the field reached levels of 12.8 million standard cubic feet a day (mmscf/d) over 9 wells. The Bobocu field produced 33 billion cubic feet of gas over its 18 year production lifetime.

Zeta says that, due to "sand production, poor completion practices and a generally poor understanding of the field", the field was closed for production in 1995. However, the company says that following its acquisition of the field in 2007, it has identified a number of exploration targets in the "Delta Wedge Sequence". These targets include already drilled areas in the stratigraphic traps of a delta lobe environment, as well as un-drilled delta wedge lobes.

Seismic evaluation of the field has identified a mean contingent resource of 44 billion cubic feet, Zeta says, with a mean prospective resource of 14 billion cubic feet.

Zeta will begin work on the field initially with one appraisal well, the Bobocu 310 well, which is expected to cost $3.5 million. This well will be drilled in the third week of July with operations planned to take 30 days.

 "We are very excited about the Bobocu 310 well operation," Managing Director of Zeta Stephen West said. "We have spent a number of years de-risking the field through desk based studies and 3D seismic and the project is now ripe for drilling."

The company also says that besides drilling new wells using modern drilling techniques, it will also seek to work-over existing wells, where possible.

Zeta is the 100 per cent stakeholder and operator of the Bobocu field.