US-based oil field services company Halliburton will commence directional drilling side-tracking at Salda 4 gas well in Comilla today.
Halliburton has been brought in to undo snags hit by state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (Bapex) whose rigs have become stuck while drilling two onshore gas wells.
Drilling work at the two wells has ceased completely due to various problems, leaving the rigs idle for around 10 months.
“Bapex has signed a contract with US-based Halliburton to remove bottlenecks at two drilling jobs at the Mobarakpur and Salda wells,” a general manager of Bapex told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The US company will charge around $1 million for the two jobs, a Bapex official said.
Bapex, the drilling arm of state-owned Petrobangla, had earlier begun drilling at Mobarakpur and Salda with its own rigs, until it ran into trouble. Six months ago, a rig got stuck after drilling 2,700 metres at Salda 4.
Halliburton will start drilling at Mobarakpur 1, whose rig is stuck at 4,240 metres, after the drilling is completed at Salda.
Drilling will take place for 16 days at Salda 4 and for 11 days at Mobarakpur 1.
Dhaka University Geology Professor Badrul Imam told the Dhaka Tribune: “The problems occurred because of the bureaucratic way Bapex tends to run its operations.”
The hiring of Halliburton was delayed because of bureaucratic tangles, sources said.
“If it were private company, it could have immediately hired a specialist, but as a state-owned company, Bapex is not empowered to do so,” Badrul added.
Drilling at Mobarakpur has been suspended for ten months after a Bapex rig tilted sideways on the drilling pad. The rig, Bijoy 12, was deployed to Mobarakpur 1 aiming to drill up to 4,700 metres.
Bapex suffered a similar mishap at the Salda 4 site, where it was aiming to drill up to 3,200 metres. “Ironically, when the prospect of finding gas in Mobarakpur well looked bright, the drilling pipe in that well got stuck because of complexities,” he said.
“Mobarakpur is an exploratory well, a new well. Finding gas there is good luck and getting stuck is bad luck. But Salda is a development well, where finding gas is expected. Getting stuck there contributes to the gas crisis,” he added.
He said from a technical perspective, the incident was not unusual. The required step is to side-track the drilling pipe from its previous vertical track and to carry on with the drilling.
