The East Cheleken oil and gas field is one of the oldest in Turkmenistan. In the country and abroad, everything related to the history of development and mining is of great interest, and when you come across those who were directly involved in the discovery and development of such deposits, made a feasible contribution to building up the economic potential of the republic, you always want to ask about the details of those historical events.

With some of these questions, we turned to one of our compatriots, the elder of the oil and gas complex, who worked for about twenty years as the head of the modeling center at the Khazar Consortium, Sergey Viktorovich Grigoriev.

- Sergey Viktorovich, if I may, to begin with, briefly about the origins of work on the East Cheleken area, its discovery as an oil field.

– East Cheleken - the northeastern wing of the giant anticlinal structure Cheleken. Its study and development began at the end of the 19th century. The establishment of the prospects of the Cheleken deposit was carried out by deep drilling in the 70s -90s of the last century. The first wells produced an oil flow of up to 100 m3/s with a large amount of gas from the lower red-colored deposits. Some wells were mothballed at that time.

– What innovations have been applied by the “Turkmenneft” Concern to enter the mothballed territory in the development mode.

– In 1999, with the transfer of rights by the Turkmenneft Concern under a production sharing agreement for the re-entry of the East Cheleken area to the Khazar Consortium, which included OGPM Khazarneft as the Concern’s Operator, and the Pade Oil Company, later renamed Maitro International Limited (MIL), as an investor and expert, began intensive development of the large prospects of the East Cheleken area identified two decades ago.

– What, in your opinion, useful actions were performed at the stage of formation of the production structure?

– With the entry into the management of the Company of highly qualified technical and geological managers, their systematic and consistent decisions managed to quickly enough, together with the Operator, bring the field to a high level of specific production, that is, the development of an area with a minimum number of inactive wells that have come from the initial stage to conservation exploration drilling.

To ensure well-thought-out work to quickly bring the field to a high level of production, the Company hired highly qualified specialists with knowledge of the processes of opening and development of horizons, knowledge of the processes of geological and hydrodynamic modeling, processing methods and other related analytical processes, as well as high-level system specialists.

Another and probably no less relevant action of the leadership was the organization in 2003 of their own Modeling Center, with the acquisition of high-level computing, graphics and mathematics for it, which was entrusted with the functions of a center of maximum opportunities.

- What was the sequence of work of the Khazar Consortium on the expansion of production based on?

– Despite the creation of the modeling center, the Khazar Consortium used the results of the processing of geophysical well surveys performed by the “Balkanneftepromgeofizika” Department.

However, it should be noted that the specialists of the center, being experts, simultaneously performed similar work using higher-level software.

In addition, the center's staff archived all digital material. Archiving made it possible at any stage of development to perform a parallel comparative interpretation of the well survey history.

Every year, the consortium developed reasonable plans to expand production drilling, which allowed for a short period of time to significantly increase the stock of production wells and thereby multiply the daily oil production.

– As a rule, most of the wells being built in all fields are vertical, whether the Consortium used directional wells and, if so, how it was done.

– In 2002 - 2003, an experimental directional well was drilled at the field, which was given the opportunity to obtain large volumes of oil from target productive horizons for a long time.

The drilling process was based on telemetric tracking of the well trajectory designed with the involvement of the geological model of the area created by Schlumberger in 2002-2003 on the basis of several seismic surveys carried out in the area in the 90s.

– Have there been any attempts at the modeling center to identify the productivity of other horizons relative to the target ones already being drilled?

– Yes, well-founded reserves were also found. At a number of fields in Southwestern Turkmenistan, the productivity of the Apsheron deposits was discovered at one time, which contributed to the volume of oil produced.

– What prospects for increasing production in the future does the East Cheleken field have?

- As for the prospects for increasing production, there are three real directions for the field: with the possibility of transferring Absheron deposits from one category to another; with the optimization of the selection of fittings for deposits and the launch of a technology for restoring idle wells; At one time, drilling a prospecting and parametric well in the East Cheleken area in the arch, with a depth of 6000 m, two promising sets of deposits were identified, which are located from the target deposits: the first is approximately 1000 m lower, the second (from the target) is approximately 1300 m. On the second, gas-oil-water was obtained from the lower layers after perforation, which confirms the prospects of the complex.

Their introduction into development within the infrastructure of the area will require additional exploration drilling. However, the costs of opening new horizons will pay off many times over.

- Thank you for the interview.