Wellington-headquartered L&M, the project’s operator, said today that Dean-1A reached its total depth of 1956 metres late on Friday night after it was determined the well had reached the base of the McIvor limestone formation.

Electric wireline logs were run over the weekend and, after interpretation of the logs, L&M Petroleum and MRP decided to flow test a gross interval of 1073m to 1350m to evaluate the gas flow potential of the zone.

L&M said a cement plug over the interval 1350m-1450m was now being set in preparation for installing test equipment once it arrived at the rig site.

The test for potential gas production was expected to start within the next 48 hours and the results would be announced as soon as they were available and had been interpreted, L&M said.

Dean-1A is L&M and MRP’s second deep well in licence PEP 38226 and the last deep well for the year.

The prospect has best estimate potential resources of 194 billion cubic feet of gas originally in place.

Government-owned MRP is earning a 50% stake in the licence by contributing to drilling costs.