Buru Energy Ltd., Perth, stared producing oil from the Canning basin onshore Western Australia. The company put its Ungani-1 sidetrack wildcat on extended production test beginning with test rates in excess of 2,000 b/d.
Eric Streitberg, Buru executive director, points out that Ungani is the first new production from the Canning basin since the 1980s. What’s more, the discovery of Ungani in October 2011 came exactly 10 years after the last major oil discovery in the State at Hovea field in the North Perth basin, a well in which Streitberg also was involved through his former company, ARC Energy.
The plans for Ungani are to produce the well at varying rates to enable estimates to be made of longer-term sustainable flow rates and reservoir productivity as well as to establish flowing parameters through the extended production test facilities.
The plant has a maximum design capacity of 1,000 b/d, but the flow will be kept to an average of 4,000 b/d to meet the requirements of data gathering. There are also limitations imposed by the transport system which involves trucking the oil more than 2,000 km to the BP PLC refinery in Kwinana south of Perth. The oil will be refined for domestic consumption.
The extended test will run for 6 months. The data collected will be used to optimize the design of full field development.
Buru plans to conduct further appraisal and development drilling at Ungani later this year following the perusal of data from a 3D seismic survey over the field. This will be critical in accurately determining the field’s reserves.
The company has lodged an application for a production license and begun native title negotiations.
