What Peak Oil? Update On Weald Basin Under Gatwick Airport, England -- March 20, 2016

Rigzone is reporting:

Production start-ups have occurred all over the globe within the first few months of this year, with considerable increases in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Several additional projects across the latter two regions are expected in the near future, and a variety of recent developments in East Asia are expected to ramp-up their outputs by year-end.

In Europe, Total’s UK-operated Laggan-Tormore development in the West of Shetland area, will produce 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). Despite its status as a “key component” of Total’s future production growth, the Laggan-Tormore project has been delayed numerous times, with output commencement initially expected at the end of 2014. Situated in 1,968 feet of water, the Laggan-Tormore gas and condensate fields feature an 86-mile tie-back of four subsea wells to an onshore Shetland gas plant, which has a capacity of 500 million cubic feet of gas per day (MMcf/d).

In addition:

Another European production start-up got underway in February at the Horse Hill-1 discovery in the UK’s Weald Basin. Oil flowed from the well at an initial rate in excess of 700 barrels of oil per day (bopd), in an approximate mix of 50:50 oil to water, before stabilizing to more than 463 bopd, in an approximate mix of over 99 percent oil and less than 1 percent water.

Light, 40-degree API, sweet oil continued to flow naturally to surface at the Horse Hill-1 at a steady rate in excess of 456 bopd, and the first two tankers full with 348 barrels of oil from the site have already been sent to be refined. Brendan D’Souza, an oil and gas analyst at WH Ireland, said the results have been highly impressive and far exceed expectations.

The Horse Hill discovery could lead to one of the most significant oil supplies found onshore UK, according to Schlumberger’s research. In August, the oilfield services firm calculated that 10.993 billion barrels of mean oil in place was imbedded within the 55 square miles of the PEDL137 and PEDL246 Horse Hill licenses.

Schlumberger’s latest estimates build on the company’s previous petrophysical evaluation of the Horse Hill-1 well, located in PEDL137 near to London’s Gatwick Airport, which estimated the gross oil-in-place (OIP) for the Jurassic section of the UK’s HH-1 well to be approximately 271 million barrels of oil per square mile.

A previous report by U.S. petrophysical analysis firm Nutech estimated that the Horse Hill-1 well contained a total OIP value of 158 million barrels per square mile. 

This is a "discovery well," I assume. The permit for this well did not permit fracking. At this point, fracking is not being done at this site (February, 2016):

• fracking not allowed at shallow levels across England (above 1,000 meter [3,300 feet]); flow testing for the Horse Hill 1 is being accomplished at three depths: 900 meter, 840 meters, and 615 meters below ground surface level
• flow testing results (March 9, 2016)
• anti-fracking protestors, against all drilling, fracking and non-fracking
• serving tea and cake to the protestors

When looking at the Horse Hill near Gatwick, England, for comparison, check these posts:

• Cline shale
• another Bakken discovered in North Dakota
• the Permian
• the Piceance, Green River Basin, Colorado

I track the Weald Basin here.

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Other projects coming on line in the past few months:

• Russia's Tyumen Region: oil production started at the Zapadno-Epasskoye field
• in the Middle East, two production starts in Iran's North Azadegan and Yadavaran development projects
• Saudi Arabia also saw significant production development at the start of the year when Saudi Aramco revealed it had started to operate one of the output operating units associated with the Wasit project
• several new output projects in Africa
• China also noted some new start-ups

Baker Huges also noted that after 12 weeks of cuts, US oil drillers added one rig last week.