RH Petrogas spuds well onshore Papua province
RH Petrogas Ltd. subsidiary Petrogas (Basin) Ltd. (PBL) spudded the Karuka-1 exploration well in the Kepala Burung Production Sharing Contract (PSC) in Southwest Papua, Indonesia.
Karuka-1 is being drilled as a vertical well using the GW-123 rig to a proposed total depth of about 10,400 ft. The well is targeting a large structure below the shallower Tertiary Kais limestone which is currently the main oil producing zone of the block.
The well seeks to test the gas and condensate potential in the pre-Tertiary section in Salawati basin. The primary target is Middle Jurassic Roabiba sandstone. The secondary target is the deeper Permian Aifam sandstone. Salawati basin is close to the margin of the northern flank of the Sahul Platform which extends from Australia to the Papua region.
"The prolific Middle Jurassic sandstone, with combined resources of close to 100 TCF (trillion cubic feet) distributed along the continental margin from the neighboring Bintuni basin down to the Bonaparte basin in Australia. Sharing the same regional geological settings, the Karuka structure may hold up to 1.8 tcf of recoverable gas resources on an un-risked basis based on our evaluation. If successful, the Karuka-1 exploration well will open up a new pre-Tertiary play for the block where other similar prospects have been identified," said Francis Chang, group chief executive officer and executive director.
Drilling is anticipated to take about 50 days.
PBL is operator of Kepala Burung PSC (70%) with Indonesia’s state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina holding the remaining 30%. RH Petrogas holds an 82.65% equity interest in PBL which gives the company an effective working interest of 57.8578% in the PSC.

Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).