Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Mar. 7 -- MEO Australia Ltd., Melbourne, has encountered a 98-m gross gas-saturated sand interval in its Blackwood-1 wildcat in the Timor Sea.
This exceeds by far the anticipated most-likely predrill estimate of 57 m. However the significance has still to be proved in a production test.
The Blackwood gas appears to have low carbon dioxide content.
This success will relieve some of the disappointment of the company's earlier program at Heron-2, which also found gas but failed to flow commercial volumes to surface.
Blackwood, like Heron, lies within the large Epenarra structure, which is a broad, low-relief anticline with a mapped closure of 1,200 sq km. The contingent gas resource of Epenarra is said to be about 6 tcf.
If Blackwood flows at commercial rates, it could revive MEO's plans for an artificial island with an LNG and methanol plant planned for nearby shallow water at Tassie Shoals 300 km north of Darwin, for which environmental approval has already been obtained.
