Santos Ltd., Adelaide, has brought in a fourth drilling rig to strengthen its gas development program in the Cooper basin.
The rig is scheduled to drill eight wells by yearend, beginning with four deviated wells in Big Lake field in South Australia. This will be followed by four appraisal wells in Moomba South field.
Employment of the fourth rig means that Santos will be able to drill as many as 90 wells in the Cooper basin this year—more wells drilled in a single year since 2014.
The company said these wells are in addition to the 300 coal seam gas wells being drilled in Queensland in conjunction with its Gladstone LNG partners.
Santos boasted the fastest-ever gas well drilled in the Cooper basin with the recent Marabooka-18 development well taking just over 3 days from spudding to rig release.
The company is on track to supply about 70 petajoules of gas to the Australian east coast this year, which it says is almost 13% ahead of expected demand.
The Cooper basin has been in production for more than 50 years.
