Ascent Resources Plc (LON:AST) Chief Executive Officer Colin Hutchinson caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the results of their PG-10 flow test
Q1: Colin, congratulations on the good results from the completion of your flow test at PG-10, could you explain the results a little bit further and what you’ve actually been doing in this test?
A1: The test results we announced were very good, they were ahead of anything I’d expected to get from the well, the headline number is that the well floated at 8.8 million cubic feet a day when it was on the largest choke size. We’ve done a range of tests for the last 3 days which will give us lots of other data points about how the well behaves and how the reservoir behaves, how it re-pressures after it gets shut each time so we’ve got a lot of data now which will inform the planning for getting into production. The recompletion and the testing of PG-10 was hugely important because the original well test back in 2011 on PG-10 was particularly short and anyone who’s looked at the company in detail has always pointed out two things to me, firstly that there was no way of getting gas to market and secondly, the flow test on PG-10 was too short. Last year we signed a deal with INA so we can sell the gas now and now we’ve done the extended flow test on PG-10 we can prove that PG-10 does exactly what it did back in 2011 so the results today are hugely important.
Q2: So, what are the next steps that you need to undertake?
A2: My goal is to sell gas as quickly as possible, we have a flow down, already been laid, it’s about 500 metres from PG-10 across the little CPP plant, ideally, we’ll get that connected up in the next few weeks and hopefully start to sell some gas before the end of March. We have this gas sales agreement with INA where we can send a quantity of gas to Croatia for sale and there are also some other opportunities to sell small volumes of gas locally to some factories and plants there. So, my goal is to get some as sales in before the end of the quarter.
Q3: Now you mentioned the end of March, are Ascent Resources still on track to begin production of gas for then?
A3: Yes, very much so. The PG-10 recompletion has taken longer than we’d hoped, we started the work at the very end of November, beginning of December, so it’s taken a bit longer to do the PG-10 recompletion but we’re still on track to sell gas before the end of March. Whilst the recompletion’s been going on we’ve been working on the flow line, the flow line has been put into the ground and we’ve been working on the other work streams, the other pipeline connections and the CPP refurbishment that we need to start selling gas so we’re still on track for the end of March.
