Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Apr. 4 -- AED Oil Ltd., Melbourne, confirmed an oil discovery in two zones in its Puffin-9 exploration well in the Timor Sea.
The well encountered a 6 m thick upper oil sand and a 3.8 m thick sand lower in the section. Both sands are known to be oil-bearing in other parts of the geologically complicated Puffin structure.
Puffin-9 was drilled in a graben, whereas all other Puffin wells have been drilled on the horst block to the north. The discoveries are separate accumulations and a technical evaluation is under way to define the reserves.
Meanwhile, the Stena Clyde semisubmersible has been moved to drill the Puffin-7 development well to tap reserves in the original Puffin-1 well drilled by ARCO in the 1970s and the subsequent Puffin-5.
Puffin-7 will be brought on stream later this year via a subsea well and a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel supplied under a service agreement with Norwegian shipping company Frontline.
Original development plans called for the next well to be Puffin-8, which would tap reserves in a separate fault compartment found by the Puffin-2 well. However, this could change, depending on the evaluation of test and log data from Puffin-9.