An East Yorkshire wellsite, abandoned nine years ago, could be an “exciting appraisal opportunity”, an exploration company said today.
Reabold Resources said it had identified Crawberry Hill, near Beverley, as a “significant potential discovery”.
The company said its priority was now to “develop plans with the aim of making this a drill-ready appraisal opportunity”.
The Crawberry Hill-1 well was drilled in 2013 by Rathlin Energy and attracted frequent anti-fossil fuel protests. It was abandoned a year later for commercial reasons, before it was tested. The site is now an agricultural field again.
Rathlin said in 2014 that the costs associated with testing “cannot be justified, relative to probability of commercial success”. Rathlin also said the well site was “not a preferred location for further drilling or completion investment”.
But in a statement this morning, Reabold said the Crawberry Hill-1 well had “good indications of gas shows and porosity”. It said:
“Reabold believes the apparent discovery at Crawberry Hill to be an exciting appraisal opportunity.”
The Crawberry Hill-1 well intersected 141m of Kirkham Abbey Formation, Reabold said.
The company said the well had been drilled to test a deeper target and there was not “a full suite of logs over the Kirkham Abbey interval”.
But Reabold added that analysis suggested there were average porosities greater than 15% in the top 20m of the Kirkham Abbey formation in Crawberry Hill-1. Porosity is one of the most important rock properties that can be calculated from well log data. It gives the rock’s capacity to store oil and gas.
Reabold also said there were probable gas saturations in the top 6m of the Kirkham Abbey formation.
Seismic mapping was now underway, the company said, to “define the extent of the Crawberry Hill accumulation”.
The Crawberry Hill-1 well is in PEDL183, still operated by Rathlin Energy.
Since the well was drilled, Reabold Resources acquired a 56% interest in the licence area. It has a direct interest in PEDL183 and owns 59% of the equity in Rathlin Energy.
Rathlin has drilled four other wells in PEDL183, at its West Newton-A and West Newton-B sites, further east. The company has planning permission for four more wells and long-term production at West Newton-A and another well at West Newton-B. Rathlin and Reabold announced plans today for the West Newton sites.
Reabold said Crawberry Hill could “add materially to the already significant resource within PEDL 183 offered from the West Newton trend”.
The planning permission at Crawberry Hill has expired.
DRILL OR DROP? 
Looking at the pylons in the photo I wonder if rig height will be an issue raised?!
Dear Heaven! Why dont they do something useful with their lives?
Are we talking fracking here ?
If you want to Derek. However, fracking for gas or oil is precluded from happening in UK by the current Government. I believe it may still be okay for geothermal.
I am sure there will be lots of other aspects, real or imagined, to make this a really exciting opportunity!
They are Di, they are looking to meet your demand, from a local source (if you live in the UK) thus cutting back upon transport emissions from imported sources. If you have no demand for gas or food, or many other byproducts produced from gas, then you are fairly unique and I am not sure-other than Heaven-that companies conduct their business for such unique individuals.
Of course, you could live outside of the UK and have a vested interest in maintaining an export market for your gas but sorry, I have my courgettes growing and they will replace courgettes being trucked up from Spain, so when the Spanish Courgette Growers Association use the Internet to tell me I should be doing something useful with my life, I will state, I already am. Same with my steak I ate last night-from a local butcher and a local farm rather than imported from thousands of miles away produced with standards that might be a lot lower than applied by my local farmer-and I trust more will be produced if the local farmer can get hold of fertilizer to encourage grass yield for his/her very tasty beef cattle. Observing the price of the steak, (£12!!) then perhaps if the farmer had some more control over his/her input costs, many related to gas and oil prices, I could eat steak more often? Have you not observed the level of food cost inflation in UK Di? If you have then, Dear Heaven, have you no empathy in your soul for those who have had to cut such items as steak from their menu? Some would rather not “eat cake”-and look what happened to her!