A decision on proposals to reinject wastewater at the Brockham oil site in Surrey is expected next month (September), the site operator, Angus Energy has said.

The company applied last year to the Environment Agency (EA) to change its environmental permit to allow water injection. A public consultation on the proposals began in March 2021.

Angus said in a statement today:

“If the determination is in favour of the application, a further period of consultation would follow, allowing for a variation of permit to be issued in late October or early November.”

Angus has been seeking consent for water reinjection for more than four years. The process can help to increase the flow of oil and reduce the cost of disposing of salty formation water.

In November 2018, the EA refused to allow water reinjection at Brockham.

Last year, Angus said it would abandon the oil field if it did not get permission for its revised plans for reinjection.

The company announced the water would be injected into the BRX3 well at Brockham. The water would come from oil production at Brockham itself, the company said, as well as its site at Lidsey in West Sussex and “compatible producing fields in the Weald Basin”.

But in April this year (2021), Surrey County Council confirmed that Angus would need to apply for planning permission if it wanted to bring in waste water to Brockham from other sites. There is no evidence that Angus has yet applied for planning consent.

The company statement said there were also plans for a proposed intervention in the BRX4-z well, from which it plans to produce oil.

“This intervention would involve the abandonment of the Kimmeridge layer and re-perforation the Portland layer in order to benefit from pressure support from water injection.

“The re-perforation itself would be a relatively low level intervention and would not require drilling, although this and the abandonment would require the presence of a rig for a brief period of time.”

Lidsey sidetrack planned for 2022

Angus has also predicted it could drill a sidetrack at its Lidsey site in West Sussex in 2022.

The company said in an update today that it had acquired new seismic data and reprocessing work was expected to be completed this week.

Angus said:

“Should the new seismic, as adjusted for our revised depth conversion, continue to be as promising as presently expected, we would move to a planning application for a side track.”

It added:

“Given likely planning permission timetables a sidetrack is unlikely to be carried out until we are into 2022.”

The work and capital costs could be farmed-out to another company, Angus said.

It said the sidetrack could be drilled under the site’s current standard rules environment permit.