Beach Energy Ltd., Adelaide, has ended its first phase of fiscal year 2017-18 Western Flank Cooper-Eromanga basin drilling program on a high with four exploration successes from six wells, including the discovery of two natural gas fields.
The program in the company’s wholly owned ex PEL106 and ex PEL91 found fields with the Lowry-1 and most recently with the Largs-1 DW1 sidetrack wells, while the Crawford-1 and Naiko-1 wells proved extensions of existing fields.
The gas exploration and appraisal campaign focused on Cooper basin’s Southwest Patchawarra and Permian Edge play fairways in South Australia.
The most recent discovery—Largs-1 DW1—is in the Southwest Patchawarra play immediately south of Beach’s Middleton gas facility. It targeted stratigraphically trapped gas in the mid-to-lower intervals of the Permian age Patchawarra formation.
The well first intersected reservoir sands of subcommercial quality but was then sidetracked to the northwest where it intersected three gas pay zones totalling 12 m of net pay across a 19.2 m gross interval.
Pressure data confirmed the shallowest gas sand to be a field discovery.
Beach said further testing was not required and the well was cased and suspended as a future producer. The other three successful wells were also cased and suspended and all will be brought on stream progressively during the early part of FY 2018-19.
Meanwhile, Beach’s drilling program in the permits will now move north to the Stunsail and Kalladeina fields in ex PEL91 where an oil appraisal and development campaign will be undertaken over the next 3 months.
