Twinza Oil Ltd., Perth, has signed a contract with China Oilfield Services Ltd. for use of the COSLSeeker jack up drilling rig to drill an appraisal well in Pasca A gas field in the Gulf of Papua offshore Papua New Guinea.
The rig is expected at the field in September. The well is part of Twinza’s plans to finally develop Pasca field, which was originally discovered by Phillips Petroleum Co. in 1968.
Since that time, Pasca has had a controversial history including a spectacular blowout in the Pasca A-3 appraisal well in 1983, under the operatorship of Australian Superior Oil Co., that caught fire and flowed wild for a number of months before it cratered in on itself.
A 3D-mapping survey conducted several years ago concluded that there was still a substantial amount of gas in the field and Twinza applied for a development license.
Twinza submitted an environmental impact statement for the development program in August 2016 with a plan to initially strip condensate and LPG from the gas flow. The LPG and condensate is to be fed into two separate floating production, storage, and offloading vessels while the dry gas is to be reinjected into the reservoir for redevelopment at a later date.
Twinza estimates Pasca A contains 19 million bbl of condensate and 20 million bbl of LPG. The propane component of the LPG will be sold into Papua New Guinea’s domestic market while the condensate, butane, and excess propane will be exported. The liquids project is expected to have a 20-year lifespan with a development cost of $250-550 million.
The subsequent gas production options include installation of a floating LNG facility or a pipeline to shore.
Pasca in permit PPL328, or application development licence APDL 14, is a carbonate pinnacle reef structure in 93 m of water 85 km from the nearest point on the Gulf of Papua coast and 265 km west of Port Moresby.