Redrilling expenses
Cost of rebuilding a lost well, repaid by the well control policy within a sublimit, to the depth and under the conditions of the original well.
An exploration well lost at 4,500 meters means weeks of drilling and tens of millions of dollars of equipment and rig hire. Redrilling is drilling that hole again to the same depth, and well control policies repay it within narrow bounds: the replacement well, at or near the same location, to the depth reached at the time of loss. Anything beyond that, drilling deeper than the original, deepening decided for better data, stays with the operator. Policies also require that the redrill actually happens: no new well, no reimbursement, which pushes the operator toward the job rather than toward abandonment. The rig's day rate drives the spend: at several hundred thousand dollars a day, forty days of redrilling quickly exceed a sublimit sized for an average well. The underwriter looks at the original well's geology, reservoir pressure and casing quality, because a high-pressure well redrilled is more likely to repeat the incident. Not to be confused with making safe, which closes the hole, and with regaining control, which stops the flow.
Textbook case: a well lost at 4,500 meters is redrilled. The new well reaches 4,500 meters in 42 days at 380,000 dollars a day, about 16 million. The policy's redrilling sublimit is 12 million: the insurer pays 12 million, the operator bears the difference, before the deductible is applied.
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