Petroneft production improves in July as programmes start to yield benefits

Dublin-headquartered oil and gas exploration company Petroneft said production rose in July, as market conditions improved and field optimisation programmes began to show benefits.

The company, which operates in the Tomsk Oblast, Russian Federation, said production at its Licence 61 operation was up year on year by 7.8 per cent, to 1,589 bbls a day in July 2020, and was currently averaging 17 per cent above July 2019 levels. Petroneft said a combination of optimising the waterflood programme at the Lineynoye field and placing the Sibkrayevskoye field into year-round production yielded the increase.

The Lineynoye field was showing a strong performance, with production more than 20 per cent ahead of July 2019 levels. The Sibkrayevskoye field also continued to perform well, with production currently averaging 246 bbls/day.

"It is extremely encouraging to be able to begin seeing the benefits of the field optimisation programmes which started last year with extensive but low-cost data gathering across our well portfolio," said David Sturt, chief executive of Petroneft.

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“This data led approach allows to achieve greater returns from our investments. Being able to stabilise and even increase production without deploying significant capital to expensive drilling is particularly good news and demonstrates the future potential of these fields.

“Looking forward, we are planning to continue improvements which in addition to optimising our water floods may involve techniques such as re-fracking and well re-entries. We believe that these low cost initiatives can deliver real production benefits.”