Duo Hunt for Rigs for Phoenix Campaign
Thursday 29 June 2017
Australian duo Quadrant Energy and Carnarvon Petroleum are still in the hunt for rigs to drill at least two wells in the Phoenix project area off Western Australia early next year.
Carnarvon said Thursday that operator Quadrant was in the final stages of evaluating tenders for a semi-submersible to drill the Pheonix South-3 well in early 2018.
Phoenix South-3 is being designed as a redrill of the Phoenix South-2 well which discovered gas and condensate at the top of the Caley interval but was unable to assess the reservoir below 5215 metres due to higher than anticipated pressures.
Carnarvon said the successful control of the increased pressure encountered in the Phoenix South-2 well led both it and Quadrant to submit cost recovery claims under their respective insurance policies.
It added the claims were in the final stages of assessment, and, if successful, the claims are expected to cover the majority of the cost of drilling the Phoenix South-3 well.
The new well will be specifically constructed to allow for the evaluation of this Caley interval, unlike the Phoenix South-2 well where the design objective was to evaluate a broader range of reservoir intervals.
The Phoenix South Caley structure is estimated to contain a gross mean recoverable prospective resource of 489 billion cubic feet of gas and 57 million barrels of associated condensate.
Carnarvon also revealed Thursday that the decision had been made to push back the drilling schedule for the Dorado-1 exploration well until mid next year.
Carnarvon confirmed that Quadrant had received tenders for a jack-up as it looked to spud Dorado-1 later this year, however it claimed there was limited jack-up rig availability in the second half of 2017.
It was also determined significant cost savings and more efficient well operations could be achieved by aligning the drilling of Dorado-1 with Quadrant’s drilling campaign next year, while also minimising exposure to the Australian cyclone season.
Carnavon said it was still the joint venture’s intention to use a jack-up rig to drill Dorado-1, with the spud date now expected to be mid-2018.
Dorado-1 will also target the Caley sandstone and, if successful, could be developed as the tie-in point for the Roc and Phoenix South resources.
The joint venture is currently in the pre-frontend engineering and design phase of the Roc development which is focused on developing g the discovered hydrocarbons in the Phoenix project area.
It has previously been reported Quadrant and Carnarvon are working on a $1.6 billion field development whereby the Roc field will act as a host facility and other discoveries would be tied in to its infrastructure.
A standalone floating production, storage and offloading vessel is envisaged alongside one or more wellhead platforms, with liquids to be processed and stored on the FPSO while gas will be evacuated via a new subsea pipeline to either the domestic market in Western Australia or an existing liquefied natural gas facility or both.
Quadrant holds an 80% operated stake in the Phoenix project acreage, with Carnarvon holding the remaining 20% interest.