>Interesting article, but it would be nice if the "Expert Contributor" understood the difference between "tight sand" and "shale" development. To the best of my understanding that portion of the Mako Trough under FO license is not a shale basin.

No kidding. There sure is lots of confusion between "shale gas" and "tight gas". The Szolnok is definetely "tight gas sand", NOT shale. The Endrod is mostly shale though, so it's quite possible the Mako Trough contains a very prospective shale gas play as well as a tight gas sand play.

Speaking of "tight gas sands", remember the Core Labs conference call?

The spokesman said this:

" If we look at the prospects let's say through Germany, Hungary and some of the other
adjacent basins there, its too early to tell, we've gotten the first couple
of three cores in-house"

Pay special attention to that "3 cores" part, then read this (from Core Labs website)

GLOBAL TIGHT GAS SANDS STUDY - New!

Currently, numerous oil and gas companies are extending and even beginning their efforts toward the exploration and exploitation of tight gas sand reservoirs outside of the United States and Canada. These reservoirs have proved to be challenging in terms of reservoir characterization and optimizing fracture stimulation techniques. Many companies do not have key rock property data that are crucial for understanding these reservoirs and for designing optimal fracture stimulations. Many treatment options are available and operators are often left with very expensive “trial and error” field testing of various fracture stimulation techniques. No hydraulic fracture design can be optimized, or in many cases, successfully performed or pumped in the field without the rock property data. Therefore, in order to properly evaluate and exploit tight gas sands, appropriate types of rock property data need to be measured and integrated with log data, stimulation techniques, and production test information. These integrated data sets and case histories will provide operators with the critical parameters to optimize their exploitation of these reservoirs and reduce finding and development costs.

The Integrated Reservoir Solutions Division of Core Laboratories is proposing to interested companies participation in an ongoing multi-company, geo-engineering study of Tight Gas Sands that is being extended to areas outside of North America. For the past four years, our Fracture Stimulation Optimization technical teams have been analyzing and evaluating Tight Gas Sands in North America and have developed a very large and comprehensive database. This database consists of the characterization and evaluation of numerous conventional cores taken from multiple, tight gas sand formations and integrates these data with the stimulation design and production characteristics into a case history. This project will provide international operators with valuable information not only on their own contributed wells, but also on other operator’s wells in other Tight Gas Sand formations. The data and understanding of the North American Tight Gas Sand reservoirs will provide international operators the most current reservoir characterization, completion designs, and production performance data that can serve as analogs and benchmarks for international Tight Gas Sand reservoirs.

Each company joining the project will be required to contribute conventional cores from three (3) wells for analysis, evaluation and inclusion into the database. The conventional core must be through a Tight Gas Sand reservoir. Conventional cores from existing wells may be contributed, as well as cores from future exploration and/or development wells. It is anticipated that conventional cores from a minimum of thirty (30) international wells will be added to the approximately one hundred (100) North American case history wells in the project, making the largest and most comprehensive Tight Gas Sand database in the world.

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I find it interesting that Core Labs was expecting "3 cores" from Europe, and that their study requires the submission of cores from "3 wells". I'm wondering if perhaps in the conference call, he actually meant they were expecting cores from 3 wells, and not "3 core samples".

This article also makes it quite clear on how important it is to understand the geology in order to be able to successfully frac the rock. I wonder if the reason that the Foldeak-1 was such an expensive well was because they took a lot of core samples. After all, I don't think they had many cores to work with, other than old cores from the historic Hod-1. For some reason, it appears that Falcon didn't obtain many with their wells.

This is from the Scotia report:

In summary, the porosities being calculated did not appear correct, and there was very little in the way of core data to allow proper calibration. For this reason, the evaluation on the Hod-1 well was reviewed first since there were many cores taken, allowing the log responses to be calibrated to core data.