Oil and gas activity still high for State’s juniors

Perth oil and gas companies have remained a hive of activity with several companies making key announcements in the past week.

Exploration partners ARC and Origin Energy announced that they had found oil at the Centella-1 well of the Western Australian coast. They are optimistic that the field is of commercial size.

ARC managing director Eric Streitberg said the location was interpreted to be in a gas prone portion of the Centella licence so it was very encouraging to find oil.

“This discovery has the potential to now open up additional targets in the area that may also contain oil,” he said.

“This is the fifth exploration well to be drilled in the 3D seismic grid, the fifth to establish the presence of hydrocarbons and the fourth to be productive.

“Although it will be necessary to wait for the results of further production tests for estimates of the potential long-term flow rates and reserves volume, early indications are that the field is of commercial size and we will be moving to develop it as soon as practicable.”

The Centella-1 well is located 6.5 kilometres east of the Hovea Production Facility and 1.3 kilometres northwest of the Mondarra Gasfield.

Meanwhile, Empire Oil and Gas has announced that a Texas-based financial services company has agreed to raise up to $US11.35 million for a farm-in agreement.

Under the agreement, First Diversified Financial Services will raise a minimum of $US4.42 million from US financial institutions with the money to be used to fund exploration in Empire’s onshore Perth Basin acreage.

The money will be spent over the next two years on seismic exploration and drilling up to five wells in five oil and gas prospect areas.

Empire will operate all of the programs, which will be conducted within four of Empire’s onshore Perth Basin petroleum exploration permits.

Tap Oil is also gearing up to kick off its participation in a 25-well program in Australia and New Zealand, targeting total reserves of 100 million barrels of oil equivalent, during the next 12 months.

Subject to rig availability and joint venture approvals, Tap will kick off its six-well New Zealand schedule this month while the first of a possible 11-well drilling program will start in Australia in November.

Meanwhile, Roc Oil, Wandoo Petroleum and Voyager Energy and others will drill up to six wells in the fully funded offshore Perth Basin.

Three exploration wells have been confirmed on Fiddich-1, Hadda-1 and Flying Foam-1 which were selected from 3D seismic.

An exploration well (Blue Jacket-1) will be drilled pending the results of 2D seismic and two development wells are planned for the Cliff Head oil field.

“We are finally overcoming the tight market for offshore drilling rigs and have a big drilling program ahead,” said Voyager Energy managing director John Begg.

“It will be our first drilling program on large targets offshore that have been selected using the 3D seismic technology that is proving so effective onshore in the Perth Basin.”

“What’s more, by the time we finish the offshore program we should just about be ready to drill onshore in the Jingemia area, also with 3D seismic to select the targets.”