OREANDA-NEWS. November 12, 2012. LUKOIL became the first Russian company to have conducted pilot offshore hydraulic fracturing at well No. 8 of the Vladimir Filanovsky field located in the Northern Caspian Sea.

Exploratory drilling conducted at the V. Filanovsky field, discovered in 2005, resulted in the discovery of three deposits: a gas-condensate deposit in the Albian stage, a gas-condensate-oil one in the Aptian stage and a gas-oil one in the Neocomian superstage of the Early Cretaceous sediments.

Exploratory well No. 8 was drilled in 2011 for the purpose of detailed field appraisal.

Prior to the hydraulic fracturing, the maximum oil influx during productive formation testing in well No. 8 had come to 3.7 tons of oil per day. Completion of the hydraulic fracturing resulted in a 20-fold increase in the oil influx.

The outcome of hydraulic fracturing in well No. 8 served as a basis for prediction calculations and formulation of development options as regards the reserves of the Aptian stage. Hydraulic fracturing in the producer wells here will bring an extra 44 million tons of reserves into development.