Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Dec. 5 -- A joint venture of ConocoPhillips and Santos Ltd. has confirmed the presence of natural gas in another field in the eastern Timor Sea during its aggressive search for reserves to feed a second LNG train at its Darwin liquefaction plant.
The JV recorded a strong flow from the Barossa-1 well. It is on an old Royal Dutch Shell PLC discovery, Lyndoch, on Permit NT/P69 about 295 km northeast of Darwin and near the maritime boundary with Indonesia.
The main test, on a high quality reservoir interval, flowed gas at 30 MMcfd through a 56/64-in. choke accompanied by condensate at 7-9 bbl/MMcf of gas. The flow rates were constrained by limitations of the rig equipment.
An earlier test of a lesser-quality reservoir flowed at 0.8 MMcfd of gas through a 1-in. choke.
Barossa-1 is the third well on the structure following Shell's Lyndoch-1, drilled in 1973, and Lyndoch-2, drilled in 1998. Shell abandoned the prospect as uneconomic at the time.
The reservoir lies about 4,250 m subsea in 233 m of water.
The one drawback, in common with other finds in this eastern Timor Sea region, is the relatively high levels of carbon dioxide—in Barossa's case 16%.
The JV's earlier Caldita discovery immediately to the south in an adjoining permit has similar CO2 content, as does Santos' Evans Shoal field to the southwest.
Nevertheless, the Barossa-1 result is encouraging. It builds on the group's resources in this region and may result in a development that links all the fields in this general area via a trunk line to Darwin.
Japanese company Inpex Corp. also has a major discovery in Abadi field in Indonesian waters near the Australian offshore border. Because of its isolation from Indonesian infrastructure, Inpex is considering a development option to send Adabi gas via pipeline to Darwin. Like ConocoPhillips and Santos, Inpex holds an interest in the Darwin LNG plant.
Barossa-1 will now be plugged and abandoned and the rig moved south to drill a Caldita-2 appraisal.
ConocoPhillips has 60% of Barossa and Caldita while Santos holds the remaining 40%.
