Austral told the NZSX today that Cardiff-2A in PEP 38738 continued to lift gas plus condensate, oil and completion fluid, as the two upper Eocene-aged Kapuni formation test zones cleaned up.
There was a continuous gas flare, with gas rates exceeding one million cubic feet per day, with pressures and volumes rising steadily. There were also several hundreds of barrels per day of liquids, mostly drilling and fraccing fluids.
But the bottom and main pay zone, the K3 sands, remained shut-in by the sand within the completion tubing and it could be some time before this zone could be accessed.
The well was being allowed to continue to clean up, with oil and condensate being diverted to storage tank.
Austral and its Cardiff partners have had a frustrating time with the well – having to earlier sidetrack it and then wait for fraccing equipment.
Austral chief executive Dave Bennett has previously told EnergyReview.net, “Everyone needs to be patient; we are making progress, if only inch by inch.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the licence, stable oil production from the shallower Cheal-A3X well was continuing, with over 20,000 barrels of oil and negligible associated water having been produced since late May.
Austral also said the Supplejack-1 well in PEP 38741 spudded earlier today and that the ODE 19 rig would take three weeks to drill to the 2600m TD to test targets at Miocene-aged Urenui and Moki levels defined by the Kaimata 3D seismic survey.
Bennett also took a potshot at Crown Minerals’ inflexibility over work program commitments in East Coast acreage PEP 38330, saying it would not allow operator Austral (44.23%), Pancontinental Oil and Gas (42.87%) and Sun Resources (12.9%) additional time to seek other funding parties to diversify risk.
The partners had therefore relinquished this acreage, which had included the Wharekaka prospect previously considered for drilling, according to Bennett.
"While unfortunate, this will allow Austral to concentrate more on its core opportunities in the Taranaki Basin, and on its bigger upside exploration projects in Papua New Guinea," he said.
Austral had previously drilled six wildcat wells and acquired several seismic surveys in the East Coast Basin of New Zealand.
Currently operator Austral (35%) and its PNG partner, Rift Oil (65%), had secured a heli-portable rig to be commissioned in the US and then mobilised to PNG for the drilling of the Douglas-1 well before the end of the year.
The PEP 38738 deep partners are: operator Austral (25.1%), Genesis Energy (40%), Cheal Petroleum (15.1%) and IRM (19.8%). The PEP 38738 shallow partners are: operator Austral (36.5%), Cheal Petroleum (30.5%) and International Resource Management (33%).
