Talos Energy Inc. has successfully discovered pay in its Tornado 3 sidetrack well (Tornado Attic) located in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the company said on June 3. Talos holds a 65.0% working interest in the Tornado field and is the operator with Kosmos Energy also holding a 35% working interest.
The Tornado Attic well was designed to optimize recovery and was drilled approximately 4,500 ft from the Tornado water flood injection well and 1,550 ft away from the closest existing producer well. Drilling operations were conducted from the Seadrill West Neptune rig and encountered approximately 85 gross (63 net) ft of true vertical thickness pay in the B6 Upper Zone with rock properties and reservoir consistent with internal modeling and pre-drill expectations. The company will immediately move to the completion phase. As a result of the existing infrastructure in place and accelerated completion timeline, production is expected by the third-quarter of 2021, ahead of initial expectations. Talos expects the Attic Well to produce approximately 8,000 to 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (MMboe/d) gross (approximately 80% oil) once online.
The Tornado field was discovered in 2016 and is located approximately three miles south of the company's Phoenix complex, which was acquired in 2013 and utilizes the HP-I floating production facility. To date the Tornado field has produced approximately 34 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) gross, approximately 80% of which is oil. In 2020, Talos initiated the intra-well waterflood project, drilling an injection well which sources water from a large aquifer above the producing B-6 Sand. Known as a "dump flood", the project is one of the first of its kind in a subsea, deepwater environment. The higher pressured aquifer naturally injects over 20,000 barrels of water a day into the lower pressured producing reservoir at the downdip boundary of the geological formation, creating reservoir energy to help maintain production and increase ultimate recovery throughout the Tornado field.
"We are pleased to announce success with our latest Tornado well, which will optimize recovery from the field and builds on the success of the recent water flood project where our multi-disciplinary team has done a fantastic job,” Timothy S. Duncan, Talos president and CEO, said. “More broadly, this success highlights our diversity of project inventory, spanning a wide range of target sizes, risk profiles and turnaround times to first production by utilizing infrastructure in place. We look forward to bringing this well online ahead of schedule and to adding production from our prolific Tornado field, which has been a steady, material contributor to our company's success since it was discovered over five years ago."