PTTEP has kept alive its development options for the Cash-Maple gas-condensate project in the Timor Sea with the renewal of retention lease AC/RL7 encompassing the fields.
Initial development plans for the fields—in the Ashmore Cartier territory 680 km west of Darwin and 700 km northeast of Broome—centered on a floating LNG project, but the idea was abandoned in favor of a gathering system feeding into a fixed platform arrangement (OGJ Online, July 15, 2011).
The project has progressed slowly since drilling of the Cash-2 and Maple-2 appraisal wells in September 2011 with PTTEP planning up to five new wells in the surrounding region to evaluate nearby prospects.
The first of these, Orchid-1, drilled in neighboring permit AC/P54 in February 2019, was a successful gas-condensate discovery with net pay thickness of 34 m. It is being incorporated into the overall development planning (OGJ Online, Mar. 8, 2019).
The original Cash and Maple fields, discovered in 1989 by BHP Petroleum, were deemed uncommercial at the time.
PTTEP farmed into the AC/RL7 lease in 2009. Since then, work including Cash-2, Maple-2, and the Orchid discovery has determined the project development area could potentially hold 3.5 tcf of resources.
PTTEP holds 100% interest in the project.