Cana­di­an oil and gas com­pa­ny Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration has made a dis­cov­ery of nat­ur­al gas in the Cas­cadu­ra-2 field.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Touch­stone said the well was ex­pect­ed to be drilled to a depth of 8,300 feet, but drilling was sus­pend­ed at 7,132 feet to pre­serve the sub­stan­tial pay sec­tion ob­served in the well af­ter high-pres­sure gas zones were en­coun­tered.

“While we planned to drill the well to a to­tal depth of 8,300 feet, the gas sands en­coun­tered proved dif­fi­cult to man­age, and we ceased drilling to pre­serve the sub­stan­tial pay sec­tion ob­served in the well. Drilling sam­ples and open hole wiring logs in­di­cat­ed over 525 feet of sands in the tar­get­ed Her­rera for­ma­tion with hy­dro­car­bon shows ob­served in sam­ples and at the sur­face through­out the pri­ma­ry in­ter­vals,” Touch­stone said.

It men­tioned that the top of the key Her­rera for­ma­tion was de­tect­ed at a mea­sured depth of 6,186 feet, with sand and shows ob­served through­out the sec­tion to the to­tal depth of the well.

“Based on these en­cour­ag­ing re­sults, we are cur­rent­ly in­stalling cas­ing for fu­ture pro­duc­tion. We ex­pect to test the well di­rect­ly in­to the Cas­cadu­ra nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty in the third quar­ter of 2024,” Touch­stone said.

The oil and gas com­pa­ny said the flow line pro­cure­ment has com­menced to tie in fu­ture pro­duc­tion from the Cas­cadu­ra C sur­face lo­ca­tion to the Cas­cadu­ra nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

It ex­plained that the drilling at its CO-1 block is sched­uled to com­mence be­fore the end of Feb­ru­ary, with two wells to be drilled from a sin­gle sur­face lo­ca­tion.

Com­ment­ing on the dis­cov­ery pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Paul Baay, said the Cas­cadu­ra-2 de­lin­eation well drilling re­sults rep­re­sent a great start to 2024.

“Cas­cadu­ra2 has proved up the con­cept of high­ly pro­duc­tive sands ex­tend­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the east of our ini­tial Cas­cadu­ra dis­cov­ery. We es­ti­mate that the well was drilled for un­der US$6 mil­lion on a gross ba­sis, which fur­ther en­hances the eco­nom­ics of this pro­lif­ic hy­dro­car­bon fair­way. With this new da­ta point, we can de­sign a mul­ti-year drilling pro­gram to ful­ly de­vel­op the struc­ture. This well has not de­fined the east­ern edge of the struc­ture, which war­rants fur­ther de­lin­eation through fu­ture drilling,” Baay de­tailed.

Al­so, Touch­stone re­port­ed av­er­age net sales vol­ume of 8,504 bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent per day (boepd) for the fourth quar­ter of 2023, with the Cas­cadu­ra field con­tribut­ing av­er­age net sales vol­umes of 6,854 boepd.

The Cana­di­an com­pa­ny record­ed av­er­age net sales vol­umes of 3,981 boepd for 2023, con­sist­ing of 35 per cent crude oil and liq­uids and 65 per cent nat­ur­al gas vol­umes.

Touch­stone has an 80 per cent op­er­at­ing work­ing in­ter­est in the Cas­cadu­ra field, which is lo­cat­ed on the Or­toire block on­shore, and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny holds the re­main­ing 20 per cent work­ing in­ter­est.

The Oil and Gas com­pa­ny has a 100 per­cent work­ing in­ter­est in the CO-1 block via a sub­li­cense agree­ment with Her­itage.