Gajak; 2025

The Mustakillikning 25 Yilligi (M-25) Gas Project in Southern Uzbekistan is a story of poor engineering practices drilling very deep Jurassic targets at 14,000 Ft. TVD, short cuts in well design, deadly levels of H2S, four very significant blowouts within an eight-month period and unnecessary deaths of rig personal. It's a helluva story and we've got a little of the inside scoop.

Surkhandarya Region, S.E. Uzbekistan; 2024

The stunningly beautiful country of Uzbekistan and hope for energy independence

Open pit mining first occurred for oil in the Surkhandarya Region of Uzbekistan not far from the Afghanistan and Turkmenistan borders as early as 1932. Thick oil was found at 30 meters below the surface.

Large volumes of gas were eventually found in Jurassic carbonates on a very large anticline with 4-way dip in 1976. The gas was very high (6%) in H2S, with 10% by volume CO2 concentrations and delineation and development of the field was delayed for lack of infrastructure and the inability to cope with deadly gas.

In 2017 the President of Uzbekistan entered into a consortium with various 3rd parties to develop the Gajak Field and called the massive $5.9 project, Mustakillikning 25 Yilligi (M-25) for Uzbekistan's 25th anniversary of independence from the Union of Soviet Republics.

The project was anything but a plan for energy independence for the small country and everything about Russia maintaining its hold on hydrocarbons in Central Asia, in spite of dissolving the Union.

The consortium was headed up by the ERIELL Group and Enter Engineering Pte LTD, both essentially owned and financed entirely by Russian oligarchs, Bakhtiyor Fazilov, Sharif Inoyatov, the son of Colonel-General, Rustam Inoyatov, head of state security in Uzbekistan from 1995-2018, Ravshan and Erkin Ubaydullaev, the sons of former National Security Service Colonel, Umar Ubaydullaev, U.S. sanctioned Russian businessman Gennady Timchenko, Alexey Matveev and financed entirely by U.S. sanctioned Gazprombank. The consortium created a production sharing agreement between the parties and named Surhan Gas Chemical Co. as operator, based in Singapore. Uzbekinstan's role in the M-25 project was thru its IOC, Uzbekneftegaz, itself all managed by former Russians.

All contracts for drilling and completion of the proposed wells in M-25, and the new gas plant to handle sour gas, were granted mostly to Russian companies, ERIELL and Edge Engineering. Halliburton and Schlumberger were involved in well planning, geo-surveying and directional steering. ERIELL, whose main office is in Tashkent, acted as drilling contractor, used its own cementing units, casing crews, coiled tubing services, OH logging. It and its Russian owners called the shots thru its operator, Surhan. The approximately $6B of financing from Gazprombank was ear-marked mostly for a giant processing plant near the nearby town of Boysun, the costs to drill and complete some 25 planned wells in the field were to be financed thru a complicated production sharing agreement of future gas sold from development of the field itself.

The entire M-25 project started off on very thin financial ice. Edge Engineering has not completed 40% of the gas processing plant by mid 2025. There were various cost overruns and operational issues in the field. U.S. sanctions and the war in Ukraine complicated matters greatly.

The M-25 O-1 well commenced in 2018 and was drilled to a MTD of 4,749 meters where it found very high pressured, high temperature gas in Lower Jurassic and Upper Paleozoic pays with 8% H2S concentrations and 12% CO2. A total of 35 gas baring zones were tested over a correlative interval of 2,000 feet at 14,000 TVD; the biggest pay in the Paleo tested at the rate of 1.3 BCFGPD. All of this was done under a protective string of 9 5/8ths intermediate casing. The Paleo pay was hot at 150 C and had bottom hole pressure (BHP) of 145 psi/Mpa (9,500 PSI). This required mud densities of 2.3 g/cm³, the equivalent, 19.2 ppg in Texas terms. The mud was zinc bromide based to be able to meet those densities. The well was finally completed in late 2019.

So, to say drilling this shit was easy was a big mistake. It wasn't. During production tests the O-1 well would puke long, thick plugs of pure sulfur up the tubing. High dollar chemicals had to be injected to break these sulfur plugs. Two additional wells were drilled from the same pad, in different directions, all requiring intermediate strings of casing set to the top of the lower Jurassic pay then a liner to lower Paleo pays.

This HPHT stuff with high H2S (8% will kill you before you get a chance to tell God you are coming) shortens the life span of the most capable of drilling engineers, the stress is so great. But everything went pretty well on the first three wells, all of which had protective casing in them.

Then COVID came along, and the world came to a standstill.

Late in 2020 ERIELL started drilling wells again now under severe cost constraints and orders from higher above to slash costs. ERIELL started trying to set Central Asia records for drilling penetration rates per 24 hours, cheaper Chinese casing started being used with smaller weights per linear foot and the alloys in the casing did not jive up with H2S and CO2 concentrations. Most importantly, the intermediate casing string, incredibly, was left completely out of well designs.

So, these Russian boys were drilling into HPHT Paleozoic pays, that require 20-pound mud, barefooted, with nothing above them but ten thousand feet of open hole to the base of the 13 5/8 surface casing.

This would have turned the best drilling engineers in the Eastern Hemisphere into Vodka drinking maniacs every night, or morning, after work.

Living on the cusp of disaster for lack of proper pressure barriers, Surhan managed to drill three more wells from 2022 thru 2024. Production casing was run to TD then cemented with light densities, nitrogen entrained cement slurries, as yet another means of cutting costs and giving completion engineers bleeding ulcers.

Then in the fall of 2024 things went south, quickly.

On September 1, 2024 well M-25-604 blew out releasing 8% H2S and the entire community of nearby Boysun, 15 KM downwind, was evacuated. Cudd Well Control was invited to this party. I have friends there to ask what happened but there is sort of an unwritten rule in the well control business you don't talk about stuff unless you are given permission and it's doubtful Russians wanted anybody to know anything about the mess. You could maybe spill the beans somewhere in Humble one night then get whacked a few days later down in Alvin. So, I don't ask.

I don't know how this first loss of surface control was fixed. It almost looks to me like the drilling rig was being used to complete the well and a WL plug was set in production tubing. I don't know and I best mind my manners. In any case, it blew bad gas for 15 days before being shut in (video, below).

Then, two days later, on September 17, 2024, the 604 well blew out again when a wing valve cut out on the production tree. This time it killed four men and sent 17 more to the hospital with bad H2S poisoning.

The poor folks in Boysun had just gotten re-settled in their homes after the first blowout and had to be re-evacuated again. I believe this time the rig was skidded and the well capped with a new tree assembly, most of this work performed behind air packs by ERIELL, Cudd Well Control and SOCAR, from Afghanistan.

Most people in the country by this time were getting a little pissed about all this H2S shit and there were questions being asked of the government in Tashkat why it was that Russians were in charge of Uzbekistan's sovereign hydrocarbon wealth.

Then in March of 2025 well M-25 202 kicked in Jurassic pay zones and was put on diverter. It was fixed by locals. Before it was purposefully ignited for sour gas reasons, the people of Boysun were evacuated a third time, prompting the newspaper in the capital of Tashkat to write,

"... a hydrogen sulfide leak occurred due to a violation of the technological process."

This statement was aimed directly at ERIELL, cost cutting and short cuts. The absence of a protective string of casing to lower Jurassic pays, given past well records, was not well received. even by local goat herders.

Then shit went from bad to worse in April.

Back over at well 604 primary cement around the production casing started crumbling like over-baked oatmeal cookies and high H2S gas began bubbling up out of the ground around the well bore and several other wells drilled on the same pad. These surface broaches were ignited because of high H2S.

A few days later the entire production tree broke off the surface casing, likely from corrosion, and was blown 100 years away. The well ignited immediately and started to crater.

Within hours 200 some-0dd feet of production tubing got blown out of the hole followed by 300 feet of 13 5/8ths surface casing, all parted, or rotted in two below the surface from corrosion. Gas that broached the surface casing shoe was now spreading like a grass fire on the surface. This spectacular series of events started the crater to heaving and knocked the fire down to a rolling boil.

At this point the well was completely lost.

Above is a photograph of the M-25 No. 604 well taken a few weeks ago. The surface fissures seen in the photo still on fire are 500 yards from the well crater. And spreading.

ERIELL has been pleading with all three major well control companies in the U.S. for help as other fissures are now hissing much further out. The entire consortium, or constituents thereof, are already deeply in debt to these well control companies and nobody will go to Uzbekistan unless substantial monies are paid, up-front, to London Banks... in USD.

ERIELL has commenced two relief wells nearby.

Standby.

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Boysun in the Surkhandarya Region of Uzbekistan is not very far from the infamous 1963 gas well fire in

Urta-Bulak (Fontan Mesto) that burned for 3 years, 400 feet high. The well had cratered and there was little to do with it, so the Russians dug a large OD deviated well to approx. 5,ooo feet TVD, and 1000 feet from the crater, shoved a 30 kiloton nuclear device down the well and let 'er rip. They turned the subsurface into unrecognizable mush and put the fire out, dead. End of story.

A very long day's drive from Boysun, across featureless desert, is Davraza in Turkenistan where the famous Door to Hell exists, also an old gas well crater. It's been burning since 1971.

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References

[1] Upstream Online

{2] Oil and Gas Journal

[3] The International Organization for Industrial Emergency Services Management

[4] The Taskent Times

[5] ROGTEC Magazine

[6] Health and Safety International

[7] Radio Free Europe

[8] KUN.UZ

[9] The Russian Octopus

[10] The internet is chock full of information about the M-25 gas project in Uzbekistan, a lot of it less than flattering about applied engineering practices. I got additional information, some of if personal, from friends I use to know and work with in the well control profession who have been there, seen that.