By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Oct. 29 -- Trans-Orient Petroleum Ltd., Vancouver, BC, plans to deepen to 5,250 ft the Boar Hill-1 wildcat it has drilled to 1,600 ft in New Zealand’s nonproducing East Coast basin.
The well’s shallow section provided some encouragement as drill cuttings “head gas” readings were progressively more oil-rich as the well cut Oligocene strata, reaching full depth in Oligocene Weber. The drillsite is at the crest of the Boar Hill structure in the 100% controlled, 1.6 million-acre PEP 38349.
Deepening will take the well into the Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous Waipawa black shale and Whangai fractured oil shale source rocks.
Trans-Orient also plans to drill and core three shallow stratigraphic wells in its 100% owned, 530,000-acre PEP 38348 around the Waitangi Hill discovery, where a 1912 well recovered 50° gravity oil at 650 ft. Recent field work indicates that the Whangai formation generated the oil.
Trans-Orient will become a fully owned subsidiary of Tag Oil Ltd. in mid-December.
Photo from Equinor | Stuart Conway.
159458497 Aleksei Zakirov | Dreamstime.
