KaraTau Consulting

Almaty-based engineering and consulting company founded in 2010 that advises subsoil users and drilling contractors on well drilling and workover. According to its website, it prepares drilling programmes and well designs, designs casing strings and wellheads with industry-standard software, runs drilling projects from tender packages and contractor selection to wellsite supervision, writes drilling rig specifications, and inspects and tests rigs before they go to work. In health, safety and the environment, it prepares HSE documentation under Kazakhstan law and plans and coordinates environmental impact assessments (EIA) and environmental permit applications.

Nearly all the Kazakhstan projects described on the website are deep exploration wells. From 2010 the company provided engineering, tendering, drilling management, completion and testing for Lucent Petroleum's wells Lebyazhye 14 and South Prorva 1, and in 2017–2018 for the 4,750 m high-pressure, high-temperature well LP3 in East Munaibai. For Sequa Petroleum it prepared tender packages, selected and inspected equipment and supervised a 6,000 m well in north-western Kazakhstan near Karachaganak and Aksai (2012–2015); for Almex Plus it did the casing design, drilling fluid selection and wellsite supervision on the 6,200 m Ansagan 2 well near Tengiz (2014); and for Alga Caspi Gas it wrote the drilling programme and the rig specification for a deep sour-gas well on the Russian border near Astrakhan (2012). In 2014 Karachaganak Petroleum Operating commissioned it to study the feasibility of batch drilling on cluster well pads with existing rigs converted for skidding. For MH Industries it wrote the specifications for two new drilling rigs and advised through their acceptance (2012–2015), and for Australian Gas Group it moved a ZJ20 rig from Kyrgyzstan to Aktau and arranged its overhaul, certification and permits (2014–2016). From 2013 it prepared the presentations of Project Eurasia — Caspi 1, a planned 15,000 m ultra-deep stratigraphic test well in the Pre-Caspian Basin — for government approval. It has also worked abroad, including in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and offshore Congo.

The company owns the rights to its own SUPREMA software for well planning and reducing drilling risk. It has six modules — cementing, hydraulic pressure losses, kick tolerance, stuck point determination, casing design and time look-ahead (drilling duration) — and a Russian or English interface. The state certificate of registration of rights, No. 1671, was issued on 18 December 2013.