Quadrant preparing to drill two offshore wells in 2018

Australia’s Quadrant Energy is preparing to drill two wells offshore Australia in 2018 with its partner Carnarvon Petroleum.

Carnarvon Petroleum on Thursday said the partnership had had a meeting recently to review progress on the Phoenix project.

“The key work flows presented included preparing for drilling the Phoenix South-3 and Dorado-1 wells in 2018, advancing technical work to improve the understanding of the basin’s geology and refining additional drill prospects to pursue in the future, considering potential development concepts and initiating some long lead items for development,” Carnarvon said.

Quadrant will first start drilling the Phoenix South-3 well in March 2018.

The well will be drilled using Transocean’s Development Driller-1 rig. The rig is about to begin ts voyage to Western Australia where it will drill a number of wells, one of which being this Joint Venture’s Phoenix South-3 in 2018 which is scheduled to be the first well in the program.

The Phoenix South-3 drilling is expected to take around 90 days to drill to the target depth of around 5,156 metres (TVDSS). The primary target is the Caley interval that contained oil and gas some 550 metres away in the Phoenix South-2 well in 2017.

Carnarvon has previously said that the Phoenix South Caley structure is estimated to contain a gross mean recoverable prospective resource of 489 Bscf of gas and 57 million barrels of associated condensate (being 143 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), gross, Pmean)

Dorado in May

Following the Phoenix South – 3 drilling, the partners plan to drill the Dorado-1 well in May 2018. The Dorado-1 well will be drilled with the Ensco 107 jack-up drilling rig. The rig is expected to start its mobilization to Western Australia in April 2018 for multi-activity campaign, with this Joint Venture’s Dorado-1 well scheduled to be the first well, too.

The well is expected to take around 45 days to complete as it drills to a total depth of approximately 4,400 meters (TVDSS). The primary target is the Caley interval at 3760 meters (TVDSS), being the same interval that contained oil and gas at the Roc and Phoenix South locations.

Speaking about 2018 plans last month, Carnarvon’s CEO Adrian Cook said 2018 would be “an exciting time with the Phoenix South-3 well evaluating the gas and condensate already discovered in the nearby Phoenix South-2 well, while the Dorado-1 well will be exploring for significant gas and condensate volumes over multiple reservoir sands only some 15 kilometers from the highly successful Roc-2 well. There are also a number of secondary targets beneath the Caley interval that are planned to be evaluated in the Dorado-1 well.”

Carnarvon Petroleum Limited has a 20% interest and Quadrant Energy (operator) has a 80% interest.