Exploration sizzles off W. Australia

A sample of E&D activity off western Australia [57536 bytes]

Exploration action continues to heat up off Western Australia.

Mobil Exploration & Producing Australia Pty. Ltd. and partners have discovered light oil near Barrow Island.

Meanwhile, Chevron Corp. was awarded three exploratory blocks off Western Australia near other Chevron blocks where significant oil and gas discoveries have been made.

Mobil strike

The Mobil group's 1 Woollybutt well flowed 48.5? gravity oil on test at a stabilized rate of 7,600 b/d, with only minor gas and no water, from lower Cretaceous Barrow group sandstones.

Initial tests indicated an oil column of at least 12 m at a depth of 2,528 m. The well reached 2,642 TD on Apr. 23.

The well, 44 km west of Barrow Island on the 1,279 sq km WA-234-P exploration permit on the North West Shelf, was suspended as a potential producer.

Interests in the permit area are operator Mobil 20%, PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. 40%, Hardy Petroleum Ltd. 30%, and Tap West Pty. Ltd. 10%.

Browse basin blocks

Chevron acquired a 25% interest in exploration permits W96-4 and W96-5 in the Browse basin off Western Australia.

The blocks cover about 1.1 million acres combined. Chevron also holds a 25% interest in the adjacent block, permit WA-241-P, where the recently-drilled Cornea wells found a potentially significant reservoir (OGJ, Mar. 3, 1997, p. 40).

Chevron hopes delineation drilling, planned for later this year on the adjoining new permits, will confirm a major oil field.

Other interests are held by Shell Development (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 50% and Cultus Petroleum NL 25%. The block will be operated by West Australian Petroleum Pty. Ltd.

Carnarvon basin block

Chevron's third new permit is W96-14, west of the gas-rich Gorgon/ Chrysaor/Dionysus trend in the Carnarvon basin, which Chevron believes may contain as much as 15 tcf of natural gas (see map, OGJ, Aug. 26, 1996, p. 27).

Recently, the 1 Dionysus well tested at flow rate of 127 MMcfd, confirming a significant gas field on trend with the Gorgon/Chrysaor fields (OGJ, Mar. 10, 1997, Newsletter).

The new leases place Chevron's largest deepwater portfolios worldwide in Australia, says Richard Matzke, president of Chevron Overseas Petroleum Inc.

Matzke said that Chevron's experience in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is a "perfect fit" for the W96-14 permit area, where water depths exceed 1,000 m.

The permit area covers about 1.4 million acres about 100 miles off Western Australia. Planning is under way for the drilling program.

Interests in W96-14 are 25% each for Chevron, Shell Development (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Mobil Exploration & Production Australia Pty. Ltd., and Texaco Oil Development Co.