Beach Energy Ltd., Adelaide, has made a gas field discovery in the onshore Otway basin of South Australia with the deviated Haselgrove-3 ST1 well in production licence PPL62 about 8 km south of Penola.
The wholly owned Beach permit is on state forestry land and the deliberately deviated well aimed at the primary Sawpit sandstone reservoir as well as the shallower Pretty Hill sandstone.
Beach said the well intersected an estimated gross gas column of 104 m (total vertical thickness) in the Sawpit with an estimated net pay of 25.6 m. The Pretty Hill intersection had an estimated net pay of 8.5 m.
Encouraged by this result, a cased hole test was run over the interval 4,203-4,185 m in the Sawpit sands which flowed gas at 25 MMcfd during a 100-min period through a 36/64-in. choke. The wellhead pressure was recorded at 2,700 psi.
Beach said the flow rate was constrained to 25 MMcfd because of the small completion tubing size and early indications suggest the Sawpit reservoir could flow at much greater rates.
The well is now shut in while preparations are made for a production test later this month with a view to proving up a commercial development.
Results of that test are expected to confirm the well deliverability and gas composition which initial results suggest contains a low inert component that will minimize gas processing requirements.
Existing nearby pipeline infrastructure will enable a swift development if the production test mirrors the initial assessment.
