Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 3 -- Santos Ltd. reported the award of exploration permit NT/P69 for Timor Sea acreage adjacent to exploration permit NT/P61, which contains the recent Caldita-1 gas discovery (OGJ, Oct. 10, 2005, Newsletter).
The NT/P69 and NT/P61 permits are jointly held by a wholly owned Santos subsidiary, Santos Offshore Pty. Ltd. (40%), and an affiliate of ConocoPhillips (60% and operator).
NT/P69 is in the Bonaparte basin off Northern Territory, about 310 km north-northwest of Darwin. A Royal Dutch/Shell unit drilled the Lynedoch 1 well to 3,967 m TD in the permit area in 1973, encountering a thin Lower Cretaceous hydrocarbon-bearing zone and logging a possible gas-bearing zone of Jurassic age. The well was not tested (OGJ, Apr. 26, 1993, p. 31).
The Shell Lynedoch 2, drilled in 1998, encountered a tight Jurassic gas column.
Contact Eric Watkins at [email protected].
