Breitling Oil and Gas Operations Information

Breitling is active throughout North America, drilling both vertical and horizontal wellbores, capitalizing on new trends and technology in the industry. We partner in 2-D, 3-D and 4-D seismic shoots that generate high grade drilling opportunities. Our energy and expertise allow us to move forward with leading edge technologies that build on our tradition of success. The Company remains nimble and is poised to capitalize on opportunities throughout the oil patch.

Breitling Oil and Gas invests millions of dollars every year in research and development of new processes and procedures and continues to fully utilize the latest technologies in order to reduce dry risk and increase the likelihood of drilling commercially-productive wells.

3-D and 4-D Seismic Imaging

The development of seismic imaging in three dimensions greatly changed the nature of oil and natural gas exploration. This technology uses traditional seismic imaging techniques, combined with powerful computers and processors, to create a three-dimensional model of the subsurface layers. 4-D seismology expands on this, by adding time as a dimension, allowing exploration teams to observe how subsurface characteristics change over time. Exploration teams can now identify oil and natural gas prospects more easily, place wells more effectively, reduce the number of dry holes drilled, reduce drilling costs, and cut exploration time. This leads to both economic and environmental benefits.

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Breitling Geo3D Proprietary Seismic Filtering

3D seismic surveys and earlier 3D surveys in particular often contain information that is beyond visual resolution and therefore hidden from the interpreter. Signal processing on the workstation using what might be termed “geological based seismic deconvolution” has the potential to enhance the resolution to the point that this hidden information can be made visible and incorporated into the interpretation. Breitling’s patent-pending Geo3D Seismic Filtering technology takes existing 3D seismic data and enhances it so it is noise free and with a broad enough “zero phase” spectrum to represent fractional match points that could lead to oil and gas discovery. Within the limitations of the seismic data we can use this synthetic data to optimize our 3D data set and locate oil and gas reservoirs that were missing in previous low resolution interpretation. (the below images shows the before and after the Breitling Geo3D filter applied)

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CO2-Sand Fracturing

Fracturing techniques have been used since the 1970s to help increase the flow rate of oil and natural gas from underground formations. CO2-Sand fracturing involves using a mixture of sand proppants and liquid CO2 to fracture formations, creating and enlarging cracks through which oil and natural gas may flow more freely. The CO2 then vaporizes, leaving only sand in the formation, holding the newly enlarged cracks open. Because there are no other substances used in this type of fracturing, there are no ‘leftovers’ from the fracturing process that must be removed. This means that, while this type of fracturing effectively opens the formation and allows for increased recovery of oil and natural gas, it does not damage the deposit, generates no below ground wastes, and protects groundwater resources.

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Coiled Tubing

Coiled tubing technologies replace the traditional rigid, jointed drill pipe with a long, flexible coiled pipe string. This greatly reduces the cost of drilling, as well as providing a smaller drilling footprint, requiring less drilling mud, faster rig set up, and reducing the time normally needed to make drill pipe connections. Coiled tubing can also be used in combination with slimhole drilling to provide very economic drilling conditions, and less impact on the environment.

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EnviroFrac™ – Environmentally Safe Hydraulic Fracturing Program

Breitling Oil and Gas’ EnviroFrac™ program was founded in February 2010 to evaluate the types of additives typically used in the process of hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracing, to determine their environmental friendliness. After evaluations are completed, EnviroFrac™ calls for the elimination of any additive not critical to the successful completion of the well and determines if greener alternatives are available for all essential additives.

An industry-leading program, EnviroFrac™ is a decisive move toward an even greener fluid system. By reviewing all of the ingredients used in each frac, the program identifies chemicals that can be removed and tests alternatives for remaining additives. To date, the company has eliminated 25% of the additives used in frac fluids in most of its shale plays.

Fracing is a proven technique that has been successfully used by the oil and gas industry since the 1940s. The process of fracing creates small fissures, or fractures, in underground rock formations to allow natural gas to flow into the wellbore and up to the surface. During this process, water, sand and a small amount of additives are pumped at extremely high pressures into the wellbore to fracture the formation. The sand or proppants used in the frac fluid hold the newly created cracks open, allowing natural gas to flow into the wellbore.

The process continues, however, to draw attention due to concerns over the contents of frac fluids and potential contamination of groundwater by frac fluids despite the fact that there is virtually no risk that the mixture can escape from the targeted zone. Frac fluids are primarily composed of 98% sand and water, but the mixture does contain a small amount of chemicals. This mixture, or recipe, varies depending on the characteristics of the producing formation and the well.

Most of these frac chemicals can be found in common, everyday household products such as laundry detergents, cleaners and beauty products. Some are even present in food and beverage items. While some additives have historically been classified as toxic, many, such as pH-adjusting agents and chlorine-based sanitization aides, are found in approximately the same concentration as in your backyard swimming pool.

Despite their common household uses, Breitling Oil and Gas, through its EnviroFrac™ program, is actively searching for and identifying more environmentally friendly options for these products.

EnviroFrac™ is also establishing simple guidelines for the company and its vendors to provide safe and proper handling of chemicals while on the surface and ensure environmentally friendly fracing operations. These guidelines will also be used to increase public understanding of the process and its necessity in the production of American natural gas.

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Measurement While Drilling

Measurement-While-Drilling (MWD) systems allow for the collection of data from the bottom of a well as it is being drilled. This allows engineers and drilling teams access to up-to-the-second information on the exact nature of the rock formations being encountered by the drill bit. This improves drilling efficiency and accuracy in the drilling process, allows better formation evaluation as the drill bit encounters the underground formation, and reduces the chance of formation damage and blowouts.

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Slimhole Drilling

Slimhole drilling is exactly as it sounds; drilling a slimmer hole in the ground to get to oil and natural gas deposits. In order to be considered slimhole drilling, at least 90 percent of a well must be drilled with a drill bit less than six inches in diameter (whereas conventional wells typically use drill bits as large as 12.25 inches in diameter). Slimhole drilling can significantly improve the efficiency of drilling operations, as well as decrease its environmental impact. In fact, shorter drilling times and smaller drilling crews can translate into a 50 percent reduction in drilling costs, while reducing the drilling footprint by as much as 75 percent. Because of its low cost profile and reduced environmental impact, slimhole drilling provides a method of economically drilling exploratory wells in new areas, drilling deeper wells in existing fields, and providing an efficient means for extracting more oil and natural gas from un-depleted fields.

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Hydraulic Fracturing also called “Fracking,” or “Frac’ing”

Used to free oil and natural gas that is trapped in shale rock formations. A liquid mix that is 99 percent water and sand is injected into the rock at very high pressure, creating fractures within the rock that provide the oil and natural gas a path to flow to the wellhead. The fracking fluid mix also helps to keep the formation more porous. Hydraulic fracturing is now widely used, with more than 90 percent of the oil and natural gas wells in the United States having used it to boost production at some time.

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