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“Moturoa-5 went out about 2km along-hole and this one went out about the same, though we sidetracked it a couple of times,” chief operating officer John Sturgess told PetroleumNews.net from Auckland.
“We completed Moturoa-6 as a potential producer, though completing the shallow horizontal well was actually more difficult than the drilling.”
Last October, Greymouth cased and ran production tubing in the deeper Moturoa-5 well, following some unspecified hydrocarbon shows at the coastal wellsite in licence PEP 38464. Moturoa-5 targeted multiple objectives inside and outside the port boundary, down to the Miocene-aged Moki Formation.
The Bonus Drilling Rig 2 then drilled Moturua-6, which was essentially a sidetrack of Moturoa-5, with the Moturoa-6 conductor set at a depth of about 180m in the Moturoa-5 well bore and deviated out under Port Taranaki harbour.
Although Sturgess has declined to say which formations Moturoa-6 targeted, previous producing horizons from the historical Moturoa oil field have included shallow Pliocene-aged formations, such as the Matemateaonga and Manutahi sandstones.
The Moturoa oil field, which almost surrounds the present-day port, was one of the first commercial fields in the former British Empire, producing over 250,000 barrels of crude over several decades until 1972.
Current PEP 38464 partners are operator Greymouth (with a 98% stake) and Maori group Ngati Te Whiti Hapu Society (which holds a 2% carried interest).
The Bonus Drilling Rig 2 is now being transported to the lower South Island for operator L&M Petroleum and its Eastern Bush-1 well in the Waiau Basin licence PEP 38226.
L&M Petroleum managing director John Bay told PNN today that he expected the Bonus Drilling rig to spud Eastern Bush-1 late next week.
Eastern Bush-1 is a follow-up well to Sharpridge Creek-1 that last June recovered small quantities of gas and traces of oil, confirming the existence of an active petroleum system in the Waiau Basin.
The Eastern Bush well is targeting best estimate potential resources of up to 253 million barrels of oil in place in the Eocene-aged Beaumont sandstones.
