WellPerform Designs Sadiya-1 Well for Oil India Ltd
During the summer, WellPerform was awarded the job by Oil India to design the Sadiya-1 well which will be the deepest well ever drilled in India. The Sadiya-1 well is planned for 6400 m TVD and will spud in the Eastern and Upper Assam, right at the foot of the Himalaya range, in an area that became accessible only last year with the opening of the Dhola-Sadiya bridge.
The conceptual design phase has just been initiated after a kick-off meeting at Oil India’s office in Duliajan, Assam. The design work is scheduled to encompass a conceptual design phase followed by a final design phase. The scope of work includes all aspects of drilling, data acquisition, completion and well testing.
Assam is probably best known for tea and tea gardens. That Assam has been an important place in the history of oil is not widely known. However, Assam is a significant oil province in India. Average yearly production from 2012 to 2018 amounts to 9.7 MM bbl. Due to the pristine and sensitive nature being rain forest with numerous National Parks, strict environmental regulations apply when conducting drilling operations in the Brahmputra Valley, Upper Assam.
In fact, the story of oil in India began in the dense rain forests, swamps, damp and undulated terrain in the Brahmputra Valley in the middle of the 19th century. Oil was discovered in Digboi as early as 1866, barely eight years after Edwin L. Drake drilled the world’s first oil well in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, US, by Italian engineers hired to build a railway on behalf of the Assam Railways & Trading company. They noticed the elephant-carried logs had oil stains on their feet. “Digging” started in 1889 headed by W.L. Lake from the Assam Railway and Trading Company. Mr. Lake encouraged his men by saying “Dig boy, dig” and hence the name of the place became “Digboi”. The discovery of the Digboi Oil Field in Upper Assam is a landmark in the history of oil.
Most of the discovered fields of Upper Assam are located South of the Brahmputra river. With the Sadiya-1 well Oil India takes exploration one more step towards North-East, crossing an upper river branch and into unexplored territory (see Figure 1).
If you have any questions or other inquiries to our endeavors in India, please contact Søren Amdi Christensen at sac@wellperform.com.
Figure 1. Map of northern India where Sadiya-1 will be drilled in proximity to a northern-eastern branch of the Brahmputra river. Reference: www.maps.google.com.
