JSC UkrGasVydobuvannya representatives took part in one of the major conferences in the industry – ‘Coil Tubing. Intensification. New Drilling’ – which began on May 31 in Lviv. On an annual basis, the hosts of the conference bring together key players of the oil and gas market to discuss essential issues.
Oleh Prokhorenko, Chairman of the Board at JSC UkrGasVydobuvannya, presented the main challenges faced by Ukrainian gas producing companies towards achieving energy independence of the country. In particular, deficiency of new resource base remains the key obstacle for increasing production of own ‘blue fuel’. Implementation of the 20/20 Strategy is impossible without issuing new special permits and discovering new resources. UGV is doing its best within limited resource base and available production facilities, and has already achieved remarkable results in 2016-2017 from the existing resource base.
The main problem with the approval of new special permits is concentrated in Poltava region. Thus, UGV has received more than 60 refusals to approve special permits only in Poltava region for two years, as a result Ukraine will not receive 1 billion cubic meters of gas in 2018. At the same time, UGV continues to do its best to beat the bag out of the available deposits and debottleneck the well workover and coil tubing markets. For this purpose, UGV initiates cooperation with the world industry leaders under the multiservice contracts for parallel 10 service lines and begins the development of tight gases. UGV effecienly uses new special permits, so the commercial production of the recently discovered deposit in Kharkiv region was reached in 17 months after receiving special permit.
Presentation of Oleh Prokhorenko: Production Dynamics and Prospects in 2018.
In turn, Oleksandr Romaniuk, First Deputy Chairman of the Board – Executive Director of JSC UkrGasVydobuvannya, noted that the gas reserves of tight reservoirs in Ukraine are bigger than conventional gas reserves. They can reach 14 trillion cubic meters of gas! Already UGV sees 430 billion cubic meters of tight reservoir gas in the Dnieper-Donets Basin (DDB) with the available licenses; the total expected deposits of the DDB is up to 8 billion cubic meters. The key prerequisites for successful development of the nonconventional gas potential are as follows:
- Holding of auctions for new sites to develop the DBB potential in general (both UGV and other players);
- Strong market of services from the best world oil and gas service companies for the development of deposits (multistage hydraulic fractures, cluster and horizontal drilling, deposit modeling, and etc.);
- Favorable fiscal mode;
- Highly qualified specialists in mining companies;
- No external resistance.
Ukraine has to move much faster to the tight reservoir development, which will make it possible to converge toward energy independence. The United States have previously followed this way – Ukraine must adopt the Western experience as soon as possible.
Presentation of Oleksandr Romaniuk: Prospects of Nonconventional Gas Deposit Development
In addition, Yurii Nahorniak, Production Director at JSC UkrGasVydobuvannya, noted that the achievement of energy independence is impossible without the utilization of high-end technologies and large-scale involvement of leading international service companies. The latest technologies allow extending life cycle of the deposits by intensifying with acceptable costs. So, in the United States, gas is being extracted from those deposits, of which Ukraine is not yet capable of extracting it. Growth of Ukrainian production will be directly proportional to the introduction of new technologies. Current limits, such as the production capacity of equipment, regulatory and documentary base, and condition of the land allocation and drilling sites can be partially overcome by the utilization of the latest technologies. In the next two years, UGV has to drill about 500 wells, and this can be done by enhancing efficiency of all internal and attracting all possible external resources.