Regulator assessing Jadestone’s environment plan for drilling off Australia

Australian offshore regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), is assessing Jadestone Energy’s environment plan for drilling operations at the Stag field, located offshore Western Australia.

NOPSEMA informed that the Stag 50H and 51H Drilling Environment Plan was submitted on 25 January 2022 by Jadestone Energy’s wholly-owned subsidiary Jadestone Australia. It is currently under assessment with the Australian regulator.

Jadestone Energy is the operator and titleholder of the Stag field production and export facility in permit area WA-15-L, located in the Carnarvon basin, approximately 60 km northwest of Dampier in approximately 49-metre water depth. The oil is currently produced from the Stag reservoir via production wells, and seawater and production water are injected via injection wells.

The field was developed using a fixed leg, 12-slot manned central processing facility platform with a liquids production capacity of 50,000 bbl/d, of which 30,000 bbl/d is for oil. It is connected by an eight-inch underwater export pipeline to a pipeline end manifold and floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel, via a catenary anchor leg mooring buoy while shuttle tankers transfer the oil from the FSO to shore.

Jadestone informed within its environment plan that drilling activities were required to sustain required oil production rates over the life of the Stag facility. In line with this, the company proposed to drill two new production wells – 50H and 51H – and plug and abandon two existing suboptimal producing wells using a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU).

The location of the proposed production wells and P&A activity are at the Stag Central Production Facility (CPF) platform, within permit WA-15-L in Commonwealth waters on the North-west shelf (NWS) off Western Australia. It has been in production since 1998 with only minor modifications carried out during this time.

Moreover, based on the recently submitted environment plan, the operational area is defined as the area within a 500-metre radius that extends around the Stag CPF, subsea expert pipeline and catenary anchor leg mooring (CALM) buoy.

According to this environment plan, the P&As and new production wells activities at the Stag platform are expected to take approximately 90 days. In addition, the scope of the plan also covers a further five years of operation.

The timing of the drilling activities will depend on rig availability, however, Jadestone’s preferred timing is between June and October of 2022. Although, the drilling activities may occur outside of this window, and could take place in 2023. Therefore, the drilling environment plan is intended to remain valid for a two-year period from the time of acceptance.

It is worth reminding that Jadestone Energy is on the lookout for a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) since late December 2021, as the current one intends to step down from the role to join Cooper Energy.