Approved: Blackbird Energy will be 10% minority interest owner in completions technology and services company
Blackbird Energy (ticker: BBI) announced Thursday that the company received final approval from the TSX Venture Exchange for its proposed acquisition of an indirect 10% minority interest in Stage Completions Inc. for C$3 million in cash. The technology and services company specializes in pin-point multistage completions that Blackbird believes will help it reduce costs, and potentially increase EURs on its wells.
“The reason Blackbird is interested in investing in this technology is because we see it being able to reduce our cost by $1.5 to $2 million per well, and because I’ve been able to lock down preferential access to the system. We’ll always be able to obtain the systems for our wells,” Blackbird Chairman, President and CEO Garth Braun said at EnerCom’s The Oil & Gas Conference® 21.
“[This system] can open up 216 sleeves through the wellbore. There’s much greater concentration than plug-and-perf, or a packer system. This will bring value to Blackbird by lowering costs, and potentially increasing EURs in our wells,” he explained.
Stage Completions is a privately held Canadian well technology and services company that has developed a patented sliding sleeve completion system that utilizes a pump down collet to open the sleeves. The Stage completion system does not require a coil tubing unit and allows for greater pumping rates, reduced friction and reduced time on surface, according to Blackbird.
Stage Completions has published a case study based on its use of the technology on a Blackbird injection well in which six stages for the water disposal well were pumped and completed with a 100% success rate. The case study highlighted results: “The system’s behavior during the job was similar to that of a ball drop system in the sense that an operator can clearly see when a collet engages its specific profile, a pressure build to shear the lock-in pins and the subsequent shifting of the valves to commence the frac job.”
The Stage Completions system can also move from stage to stage in as little as 20 minutes, substantially less than the hour and 40 minutes Blackbird said it needs between stages on its standard wells. This could shave 37 hours, or a day and a half, off of drilling time on the average sized well drilled in 2015, which is roughly 28 stages, based on development well data from Seven Generations Energy Ltd.
The Stage Completions system also employs a dissolvable alloy ball/plug that begins to dissolve after 8 hours so that no plugs require mill-out post completion, eliminating the need for a coil tubing unit. The system is also designed to allow the installation of a new ball, making re-fracs and re-stimulation possible.
“The Stage system is the future,” Braun told Oil & Gas 360. “This is a system that can be used in any formation, using any type of fluid across longer laterals with reduced spacing. This system has been designed to allow operators like Blackbird to hit oil and gas formations harder, faster and more effectively while reducing both risk and cost.
“For our next well, we are moving to a 75 stage, 4,000 tonne completion. Almost double the tonnage we completed our previous well with (BBI 2-20 was completed with 2,246 tonnes). Not to mention this next well will cost approximately $5.5 million. This will lead to significantly better rates and EUR’s,” Bruan explained.
