Australian explorationists working in the Timor Sea are shifting their focus to the Timor Gap area Australia shares with Indonesia.
The shift follows a largely disappointing period of exploration in the Western Australia and Northern Territory sectors of the Timor Sea.
Only three commercial developments--Jabiru, Challis, and Skua--have resulted from a great deal of concentrated activity in the region during most of the 1980s and into the 1990s.
BHP Petroleum Pty. Ltd. has been the most successful company, leading groups that found all three fields.
In addition, BHP drilled several other discoveries in the Timor Sea, currently noncommercial and requiring further appraisal. They include the Oliver oil and gas/condensate discovery and oil strikes at Puffin, Swift, and Montara. The only other discovery in the region was by a Santos Ltd. group with a noncommercial oil discovery at Talbot.
TIMOR GAP STATUS
Interest remains high in the Timor Gap, in the center of the Timor Sea, which had been off limits to drilling since the early 1970s because of a boundary dispute between Australia and Indonesia.
The matter was resolved in 1989 when the countries agreed to define a joint development zone (JDZ), or zone of cooperation (OGJ, Nov. 6, 1989, p. 17).
The central sector of the JDZ (see map, OGJ, Sept. 19, 1988, p. 38) is creating the most exploration interest, spurring award of 11 permits allocated under a complicated production sharing arrangement between companies and the two countries (OGJ, Jan. 6, p. 93).
Many key multinational players are involved in the Timor Gap permits, but attention will focus on outcome of the first Timor Gap wells, to be spudded before yearend by Australia's Santos Ltd.
SANTOS' SCHEDULE
Santos plans to drill four wildcats during the next 18 months.
Probable site of the first well is on the Kelp structure, originally identified in 1970s seismic profiles as the major feature in the region. As much as any other prospect, Kelp has been the drawing card to the whole Timor Gap zone. Santos believes the geology is less complicated than in the Vulcan graben to the west where Jabiru, Challis, and Skua are located.
However, the only definite signposts to the area's hydrocarbon potential have been two gas/condensate finds, Troubadour and Sunrise, made by Woodside on the edge of the JDZ in the early 1970s. It is doubtful whether gas/condensate would be commercial in the short term, and Santos hopes to be the first to find an oil field in the region.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
