TMK strikes 60m coal seam in Mongolia
The first well of three additional pilot wells to be drilled at TMK Energy’s Gurvantes XXXV coal seam gas project in Mongolia has struck paydirt. The company says it encountered 60m of net coal in the well that was drilled to 480m.
The series of new wells are part of TMK’s plan to accelerate the project into production.
The wells are located at the company’s Lucky Fox site and have been designed to accelerate gas flow rates at the site and prove the commerciality of the expansive upper coal seam.
The company contracted leading Canadian TSE-listed Major Drilling to undertake the planned program and figures each pilot well will require between 7 and 10 days to complete.
The primary lithological target of the first of the new wells was the upper coal seam which was encountered without difficulty, further validating the local stratigraphy and geological model for the targeted resource.
The slotted liner has already been installed and the well now awaits completion.
Meanwhile, drilling of the next hole in the trio was launched on the 20th of September and the company reports it is drilling ahead with a 12-1/4” bore for its top hole section.
Once drilling of the third well is complete, they will be commissioned in time for the company’s scheduled beginning of production in late November this year.
The TMK Energy team and Major Drilling are doing an excellent job executing the drilling program and drilling the first well safely and on time. The completion of the current drilling program, together with the implementation of the DTS technology, will be pivotal moment for the Company and we fully expect that the results from this program will help drive our forward program in 2025.
The production launch will carry with it the hope that the extra wells will augment the pumping capacity necessary to attain critical gas desorption sooner, which will mean a material hike in gas production rates from the well complex and a shortening of the overall period for the process.
TMK says the end goal of the exercise is not just to show that the upper coal seam in the well complex can yield commercial gas flows, but also to record and compile additional data from the thick productive zones in the upper coal seam from the installed distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technology.
The company has highlighted its plan to use the new DTS temperature testing technology in two of the new pilot production wells to assist with its well optimisation and in-reservoir modelling of the project’s upper seam.
TMK hopes the technology will help it to identify zones of increased gas and water influx, or permeability, with an eye to improving economic viability of the wells and assisting with future well positioning in the most favourable locations.
The wellfield is located close to Mongolia’s border with China and no doubt plenty of potentially interested parties will be watching for outflow numbers with keen interest.
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