Empire Petroleum Corporation re-entered a wellbore first drilled in 1959 and pushed it to 21,006 feet measured depth, 20,949 feet true vertical depth, in the Fort Trinidad field in Madison County, Texas, about 100 miles north of Houston. The company says the cost ran about $4.4 million, against the $30 million to $45 million that offset operators report for new ultra-deep wells in the same stretch of the Western Haynesville play.
The well is the Wakefield-Harrison GU B #1. Empire drilled, underreamed and cleaned out the existing bore, then ran a full modern open-hole logging suite and recovered sidewall cores at temperatures up to 434 degrees Fahrenheit. Hydrocarbon shows, both gas and liquids, turned up across the logged interval, with C1 and C4-plus identified on the gas chromatograph.
A legacy bore, reused
Fort Trinidad was historically developed to roughly 10,000 feet. The Wakefield-Harrison GU B #1 opens about 11,000 feet of section below that limit, exposing formation nobody had logged with modern tools. The wellbore dates to 1959 and was deepened twice in the following decade before being left shut in; it was never plugged and abandoned, which is what let Empire re-enter it rather than drill new. Empire says it is the first microcap energy company to take a wellbore of that vintage past 21,000 feet with a modern log and core suite.
How the depth compares
At 20,949 feet true vertical depth, Empire's well runs deeper than two other publicly reported wells in the play. The comparison, based on true vertical depth:
| Well | Operator | Depth vs. Wakefield-Harrison GU B #1 |
|---|---|---|
| McCullough GLR #3 | Comstock Resources, Inc. | 1,713 feet shallower |
| Bobby Yancey #1 (pilot) | Expand Energy | 2,398 feet shallower |
Other operators working the same deep Cotton Valley, Bossier and Haynesville objectives in the area include Mitsui E&P USA, Hilcorp Energy, Caturus Energy and Adamas Energy, a Mitsubishi Corporation subsidiary formerly known as Aethon Energy. Phil Mulacek, Empire's chairman, said those operators are producing more than 30 million cubic feet a day from the same stratigraphic section.
What the well sets up
Empire is treating the well as subsurface control for two target zones at Fort Trinidad: the Intermediate Production Zones, covering the Lower Glen Rose, Rodessa, James Lime, Pettet and Upper Travis Peak, and the Deep Productive Zones, covering the Lower Travis Peak, Cotton Valley Sand, Bossier and Haynesville. The company describes its plan as moving from behind-pipe recompletions to deepening wells in stacked reservoirs and eventually to deep-gas development across those deeper intervals.
Two more wells are being deepened to add modern logs, vertical seismic profile data and cores. Empire plans to fold that data into a reprocessing of its existing 3D seismic survey across its acreage, work meant to sharpen the subsurface picture ahead of designing a horizontal lateral off one of the re-entered wellbores.
Mulacek, Empire's chairman, said: "what has changed is the industry's ability to complete it." Empire also says it holds nearby midstream infrastructure:
- 49 miles of pipe
- 9.5 million cubic feet a day of new compression
- two takeaway outlets
The catch in the cost comparison
The $4.4 million figure reflects a re-entry into a bore that had never been plugged, not a well drilled from surface. The $30 million to $45 million range Empire cites covers offset operators drilling new ultra-deep wells. The two figures describe different projects: the discount depends on a legacy 1959 wellbore being available and usable, not on a repeatable drop in upstream well costs.
