Fortium Holdings Corp. announced that Fortium’s indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, White River Operating LLC (“White River”), has successfully completed a workover project as the operator of record on the Deshotel 24H 001 Well (“Deshotel Well”) in the Bayou Jack North Field in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. The Deshotel Well was originally drilled and completed by White River in early 2021 as an open-hole lateral Austin Chalk oil and gas well (see press release here). Production had been inhibited on the Deshotel Well due to a build-up of paraffin in the well’s vertical casing and tubing. White River performed a workover procedure on the Deshotel Well, which involved a heavy water flush into the wellbore to remove a substantial paraffin blockage and also installed artificial lift to increase the production rate. The initial results of the workover procedure have greatly exceeded expectations with over a 500% increase in current production rates being realized at the Deshotel Well. As the well has returned online numerous pumper readings have shown initial production rates as high as 30 barrels of oil produced per hour, although typically initial production rates decline over time.
Fortium’s Executive Chairman, Randy May, stated, “We are ecstatic with not only the results of this workover procedure but also the return on investment as this was an extremely low-cost procedure performed by our own vertically integrated oil and gas operation. In addition to our plan to continue drilling new oil wells, we will continue to monitor our existing portfolio of wells for opportunities to perform workover procedures to increase oil production in an efficient manner.”
White River’s Field Operations Superintendent, Larry Parker, stated, “My team and I analyzed the paraffin issue at the Deshotel Well and correctly determined that removing the well’s packer, adding chemicals to the well’s casing, and performing the heavy water flush and artificial lift addition would be the optimal procedure to remove the blockage in the well’s tubing. We’re very happy with the well’s post-procedure production and oil cut and are looking forward to aggressively drilling out our leasehold now that White River has been acquired by Fortium.”
As previously announced, White River is currently conducting a drilling project at the Harry O’Neal 20-9 No. 1 well and recently committed to acquiring two additional drilling rigs to add to its equipment portfolio (see press release here). White River will have both the equipment and the new enhanced team, which will be capable of conducting completely in-house drilling projects up to 30,000’ horizontally in formations on our leases, including the Austin Chalk and Tuscaloosa Marine Shale.
Furthermore, White River was recently sold by Ecoark Holdings, Inc. to Fortium in exchange for $30,000,000 of non-voting convertible preferred stock. Ecoark plans to spin off the underlying Fortium common stock to its shareholders of a future to be determined record date, subject to compliance with applicable securities laws.
