Rathlin Energy has announced it is seeking permission to inject fluid and proppant into a well at its West Newton-A site in East Yorkshire.

The operation, described as a “reservoir stimulation”, is designed to improve flows of gas and liquids from the well, Rathlin Energy said this morning.

In a statement, the company likened the operation to the proppant squeeze used at an unnamed well in Lincolnshire in 2021.

This is likely to be at Wressle, near Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire. A proppant squeeze was carried out at that site in July 2021.

Rathlin said the operation at the West Newton-A2 well would be “a smaller scale operation and will take less than an hour to complete”.

The company said its proposed operation involves:

“squeezing a small volume of oil-based fluid into the formation to bypass any reservoir damage created during drilling, or by other fluids previously used during well testing, and then using proppant to keep the pathways open to allow gas and hydrocarbon fluids to flow into the well at economic rates”.

The Environment Agency (EA) regards proppant squeeze as a low-volume form of fracking because the injection pressure is high enough to fracture rocks.

The operation is not usually affected by the moratorium on fracking in England or fracking legislation because the volume of fluid is below the statutory limit.

But operators must submit a hydraulic fracturing plan for a proppant squeeze to the EA and the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA). This must state how the process would be controlled and monitored and how the risk of small earthquakes would be mitigated.

Rathlin Energy did not specify how much fluid or proppant would be used at West Newton-A.

At Wressle, the operator, Egdon Resources, injected 146 cubic meters of gelled fluid and 17.3 tonnes of ceramic proppant. Egdon said the injection operations last a total of 90 minutes over a period of two days.  

Rathlin said the Wressle proppant squeeze “resulted in a significant increase in production from the existing well”.

This statement cannot be verified from publicly-available data. The Wressle well began formal production and submitted official records in July 2022, a year after the proppant squeeze.  

Rathlin Energy said information on its West Newton-A stimulation would now be reviewed by the Environment Agency. It said:

“The timeline for the proposed operation will be determined as soon as all necessary regulatory consents are in place.”

Egdon Resources recently received planning permission for two new oil wells and proppant squeezes at Wressle.

Europa Oil & Gas wants to carry out small-scale fracking for gas at a new well at Burniston near Scarborough in North Yorkshire. A drop-in meeting about the plans is at Burniston Village Hall on Thursday (26 September 2024) from 1pm-6pm. DrillOrDrop will be there.

• Rathlin Energy’s annual accounts were published today – more details here

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