A group led by Santos Ltd. has begun production from Wortel gas field in the East Java basin offshore Indonesia.

Two wells produce through an unmanned wellhead platform and a pipeline 10 km east to Santos-operated facilities at Oyong oil and gas field. Gross gas production from Oyong and Wortel fields is expected to be a combined 90 MMcfd. Gas will be transported via existing 60-km pipeline to the Grati processing plant on East Java, where it is sold for domestic power generation.

Wortel, like Oyong, is on the Sampang production sharing contract area. Wortel development was sanctioned in November 2010 (OGJ Online, Dec. 3, 2010).

Santos is operator of the Sampang PSC with 45% interest. Singapore Petroleum Co. has 40%, and Cue Energy Resources, Melbourne, has 15%.

About 70 km east of Wortel is Peluang gas field, on which Santos is undertaking front-end engineering design for tieback to the Maleo platform on the Madura Offshore PSC.