Calgary Resources Inc. flops first oil well, taxpayers outraged

CALGARY, Alberta – Calgarians and area businesses are fuming over results released just this morning of Calgary Resources Inc.’s (CRI) first well, that was drilled just within the east Calgary city limits 24 months ago.

The City of Calgary owned and operated crown corporation, that is wholly funded by tax-paying Calgarians and local businesses, missed the mark with its inaugural well that targetted the hydrocarbon-charged Lower Landfill formation of the Sanitarceous Limestone unit that extends towards the city’s east side.

Well, you can’t say that we didn’t try. After spending almost $7M to drill, complete, jackup, and pipe-in a twin-leg sideways well that did not show the promise that our computer models predicted, our economists, planners, and sanitation experts didn’t want to quit.

So we made a number of attempts to re-enter the well to extend the flat parts and even drill new legs. But at some point, we just had to call it quits. – Bill Blakely, CRI’s President & CEO, and former head of C-Train advertising

The city’s press release reports that the crown corporation drilled a dual-leg horizontal well that, accoridng to the wellsite planner, “missed the mark.”

The wellsite executionist, Ben Furbs, who was formerly the team lead for the city’s sanitation department, described the well as “TD’ing roughly 30 meters too deep, and, I’d say, 300 meters too far to the right, and we had troubles staying in zone as the bit oscillated around the target in our hasty attempts correct the overshoots. All of this zigging and zagging resulted in the well being only 4.7% in good reservoir and 95.3% in non-reservoir. I believe that is the problem, so at least we figured that part out.”

After the initial dual-leg failure, Mr. Blakely contacted the former President & CEO of Best West Exploration, Barry Bunns, for advice on how to salvage the well. Based on this advice, Calgary Resources Inc. decided to throw more money at the well in attempts to extend the existing legs and drill a few new legs from the same pad.

The result was a 11-leg horizontal well that, although very productive at 23,000 bbl/d of total fluid, produced only 15 bopd – not enough to make the well economic, so CRI, with Mayor Nenshi’s blessing, decided to abandon the well and reclaim the land.

We are the City of Calgary, and we never say quit! So after some very careful planning at our last Council Chambers meeting, we now plan to drill another well roughly 250m north of the failed well. Our computer models, which were developed with the help of reservoir engineer David Spence, indicate that the oil had migrated north of the original well just before we drilled it. So that’s our new target. Yes. 250m north of our 11-leg water well. – Mayor Nenshi

In light of the plans to drill another well at taxpayers’ expense, a group of Calgarians, lead by former Bendovus Energy CFO, Richard Lintpouckettes, plans to stage a protest at Olympic Plaza next Thursday on Mayor Nenshi’s birthday, to voice its opposition to CRI’s second well.