On Tuesday, October 14, 2008, Petromin (PTR) announced that TerraWest Energy Corp (TWE) had finalized its contractual arrangements with Xinjiang Geologic Engineering Co. Ltd. to commence drilling of two wide diameter wells (1500m and 800m) on TWE’s land in Liuhuanggou area of Xinjiang province, P.R. China. This will be a 45 day drilling program.
The 1500m well offsets a coal coring drillhole and gas desorption location completed in 2006. It is also designed to test for Jurassic-aged coal at 1100m. The 800m offsets another coal coring drillhole and gas desorption location and is also designed to be drilled and cased to the top of the J2x coal and then to run open hole permeability and production flow tests of the 40m plus J2x coal seams.
Four days after finalizing its contractual arrangements, TWE spudded the 800m well. The commencement of the drill program was celebrated with an opening ceremony. PTR’s on-site head engineer, Ryan Adams was given the ceremonial honour of pulling the switch to start the drilling and the well was officially spudded at 11:08am. The opening ceremony ended with fireworks and other traditional Chinese business ceremonies.
Petromin is very pleased to have been selected by KISR to act as the main liaison group to help facilitate the transfer of Canadian heavy oil technology to Kuwait. This appointment is designed to assist Kuwait with enhancing the development of their heavy oil resources.
In late February of 2007, a high level delegate from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) visited Alberta. The purpose of this visit is to extend invitation from Kuwait to the Canadian heavy oil industry to participate in the upcoming first Middle East Oil and Chemical Conference in Kuwait later this year. Petromin was pleased to introduce the delegate to Alberta's top tier, heavy oil groups including ARC, APA and the Provincial Government Trade Department.
Canadian Heavy Oil Association (CHOA) president Gerry Belyk is excited about the potential opportunity for Canadian heavy oil service providers, manufacturers and investors with this event. The exhibition and conference will provide a new venue for Canadian technology in heavy oil development, of which Kuwait will need to develop its vast heavy oil resources estimated to be well over 100 billion barrels.
As quoted by Mr. Peter Ho, senior Vice President of Petromin, Kuwait and other Middle East countries such as Iraq, Iran and even Saudi Arabia posses massive heavy oil resources which can be exploited and develop with existing Canadian heavy oil technology such as SAGD, VAPEX, THAI.
The opportunity in the future, to invest and develop these resources will prove to be a challenge to the Canadian groups considering the enormous geological structure in the area.
Petromin believes the strong participation of this event by Canadian companies will serve to enhance the Canada/Kuwait's technology transfer and further the main objective of establishing Petromin Resources, as the lead technology provider to Kuwait.
For further info about this event, please visit http://www.wecec-kuwait.com/
Alberta - Canada
Petromin holds a significant interest in a CBM Production Sharing Contract (PSC) in China's Western Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The PSC executed with CUCBM covers 655 sq.km. (253 sections) on a lease owned by PetroChina. It is the first-ever CBM PSC executed by a foreign party on a PetroChina lease. The area is highly prospective for CBM reserves due to its thick coals and high gas content. In addition to vast gas reserves, the project area is linked to the West-East gas pipeline owned and operated by PetroChina. The pipeline is the key transportation vehicle in moving gas from the resource rich west to the densely populated and industrialized East. Spanning over 10 Chinese provinces, the annual gas transmission capacity is estimated by PetroChina at 420 billion cu ft.
