Egypt’s WEPCO Achieves Tenfold Production Surge at Badr-1 Oil Field
The Western Desert Operating Petroleum Company (WEPCO) has pulled off a remarkable turnaround at the Badr-1 field, boosting crude oil production to over 7,500 barrels per day, a staggering tenfold increase from the mere 800 barrels per day recorded when the company first took over management of the site. The breakthrough represents a major success story in Egypt’s strategy to revitalize aging oil fields using cutting-edge technology.
Mohamed Elghamry, Senior Exploration Geophysicist at Badr Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of WEPCO, revealed during a recent Petrocast episode that the company has also expanded the field’s extractable reserves from 3 million barrels to 36 million barrels, with 20 million barrels already produced to date. The dramatic growth was driven by a technical re-evaluation of dry fields originally drilled in the 1980s, with WEPCO engineers successfully re-entering and completing these previously unproductive wells using modern seismic and drilling technologies.
In an additional milestone, the field has commenced natural gas production for the first time in 40 years following the successful drilling of three exploratory wells that uncovered previously untapped natural gas reservoirs. The 10-2X well yielded an initial output of approximately 20 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, while the BED 15-31 well in the Badr-15 area added 16 million cubic feet per day and 750 barrels of condensate per day to the national grid.
WEPCO is now partnering with Canadian firm TAG Oil to develop unconventional resources in the Western Desert, targeting the Abu Roash “F” formation. The drilling of the T100 horizontal well has already been completed with promising results, with a second well scheduled for drilling soon to complete the evaluation phase.
Source: egyptoil-gas.com
