tortman, here are my answers in bold:
In the weekly update they stated that they will return to the well in March 2010. If they got enough of a flow of oil from the uncased section of the well for it to produce commercial amounts of hydrocarbons or even think that they might be able to later, would they have to case that portion of the well prior to producing?
Not necessarily. Some formations are prone to permanent "skin effet" damage when casing the well due to the cement that is pumped behind the pipe to seal it in place. It is possible to permanently produce a well that is left in "open hole" condition but there are risks. Open hole completions were much more common b4 the utilization of fraccing and chemical stimulation to open back up the formation "skin effect" damage from the drilling/completion activities.
If they needed to case that section of the well, would they need something other than the workover rig that they did the swabbing with to do it?
Not my area of expertise but I believe they would need a different rig to install and run casing. Most workover rigs are capable of running and pulling tubing. They can even do a limited amount of drilling to remove cement obstructions or bridge plugs within the tubing/casing but not back in the open hole section.
I'm just trying to figure out why they are waiting until March 2010 to go back and casing the well is one of the things
that I can think of. Drilling deeper is another possibility, but I'm thinking they have a producer or a very viable candidate for producing and they may need to case this section of the well prior to producing.
I posted several weeks ago that I didn't like the idea of them testing the "3 zones in open hole" at the same time. There isn't any way to isolate them for individual testing or stimulation. Now it seems that ZN has come to realize this too. From their last PR, they stated "However, as we do not have zonal isolation in the open hole section of the well, we released the workover rig during the past week and are now evaluating the next steps that we can or should take in order to test the zones of interest individually. "
