Following ‘carefully planned’ restart program, Australian field recommences production

Singapore-headquartered oil and gas production company Jadestone Energy has restarted production from an FPSO operating at a field in the Timor Sea offshore Australia.

Following what the company describes as a “carefully planned restart program”, production recommenced from the Montara Venture FPSO on the Montara field early on Tuesday, 21 March.

In addition to production starting from H6 well, Jadestone Energy announced that further wells will follow, including the first Skua subsea well set to be brought online in the coming days.  

With the systematic opening of additional wells in line with the restart plan production rates are expected to increase, and the Singaporean company plans to announce its production guidance for 2023 once Montara output is stabilized.

“I would like to thank everyone in Jadestone who has contributed to the safe and successful restart of Montara operations as we look forward to putting this challenging period behind us and returning to business as usual. It is a relief to see operations at Montara being restored and we look forward to increasing production and cash flow,” Paul Blakeley, President and CEO of Jadestone Energy.

“We also plan to return to growth, having completed three acquisitions within the last six months, with several new acquisition opportunities in the pipeline. Near-term organic growth from the Akatara project remains on track and with our first infill drilling programme in Malaysia, reinforcing the point that 2023 will be a big year for Jadestone.”

The Jadestone-operated and owned Montara project, encompassing three separate fields – Montara, Skua and Swift/Swallow – is located approximately 690 kilometers west of Darwin.

To remind, a small leak of oil from a crude oil tank on the FPSO Montara Venture led to the shutdown of production in July 2022. Following an interim repair of the leak point in the 2C tank, Jadestone restarted production from the Montara field while a permanent repair was being advanced.  

However, an additional internal defect in the water ballast 4S tank was detected in August 2022 during preparations for the permanent repair of the 2C tank, thus, the company decided to temporarily shut-in production from Montara and reorganize offshore manpower on the FPSO while the inspection and repair activities were expected to result in production being shut in during the remainder of August and potentially through September 2022.

When September rolled in, Jadestone confirmed that progress was made in implementing a remediation plan for the FPSO, but was unable to provide a date for the restart of production from the Montara field until January 2023, when the firm disclosed that the restart was anticipated this February.