Independent Oil and Gas announced the spudding of the Elgood development well, 48/22c-H1.
Elgood is the first of five planned development wells in IOG’s Phase 1 project and is expected to take approximately three months to drill and complete, after which the rig will move on to Blythe in early Q3.
The Noble Hans Deul jack-up rig mobilised from the Cromarty Firth on 1 April and reached the Elgood field location early on 4 April. After preparation and jacking-up the Elgood well spudded on 9 April.
Andrew Hockey, CEO of IOG, commented: “We are very pleased to have kicked off the Phase 1 drilling campaign, another key milestone for the Company as we continue to progress towards commercialisation of our Core Project. This drilling campaign has been planned meticulously by the IOG drilling, subsurface, subsea and HSE teams since early last year, in collaboration with our main drilling contractors Noble Corporation, Petrofac and Schlumberger and our partner CalEnergy. We have a very clear collective focus on ensuring safe and efficient performance leading successfully to First Gas in Q3 2021 at the Blythe Hub before continuing into 2022 at Southwark.”
The Final Investment Decision (FID) on Phase 1 was declared in October 2019, the Field Development Plan (FDP) was approved by the UK government in April 2020, and the first gas is planned for 3Q 2021.