Santos-led group trials directional drilling in Cooper basin

The Santos Ltd.-led South Australian Cooper basin joint venture has successfully trialled a two-well gas development program aimed at finding resources by directionally drilling from nonproducing wells.

The campaign focused on Dullingari and Dullingari North fields, two of the earliest finds in the basin and located near Moomba.

Santos used a workover rig to drill the directional wells into the primary objective—the Patchawarra formation. The Toolachee and Epsilon formations provided secondary targets.

The combine reported that the second well of the trial, Dullingari-42 DW1, was side-tracked from the nonproducing Dullingari-42 well.

The side-track intersected about 62 m of net gas pay in the Patchawarra and the well has been cased and suspended as a future producer.

The JV is now conducting a full review of the results to determine if directional drilling from existing nonproducing wells can be applied to other development opportunities across the Cooper basin.

The South Australian Cooper basin JV comprises Santos as operator with 66.6%, fellow Adelaide company Beach Energy Ltd. with 20.21% and Sydney-based Origin Energy Ltd. with 13.19%.