Oz Comet Completes Mahalo Well

Australian coalbed methane explorer Comet Ridge January 9 said it has successfully drilled the Sirius Road 2 lateral well, the fifth and the final well of three-month long drilling campaign at its Mahalo gas project in Queensland.

“The Sirius Road 2 lateral well targeted the key 3.3 metres Castor seam, intersected the Sirius Road 1 vertical well and was drilled to a total length of 1990 metres, with 1437 metres in the Castor, achieving 96% within seam,” the company said.

Comet said it continues to test the Memooloo 2 well while work required to bring Struan 2 into production testing has now been completed, with the well expected to commence production testing later this week. Sirius Road 1 is expected to be brought on line over the weekend, with production testing expected to start next week, it added.

The plan for Struan 2 and Sirius Road 1 is to bring the wells on slowly, while monitoring the water in flow performance and pressure draw down. Laboratory analysis of core samples is underway for all three wells and will continue over the coming months, Comet said.

Comet Ridge, which holds a 40% stake in the project, is operating under an agency agreement for Santos as exploration operator (30%), while Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) also holds a 30% stake in the Mahalo block. It is located about 240 kilometres west of Gladstone, which is home to the APLNG terminal and Santos’ Gladstone LNG facility, along with Shell’s Queensland Curtis LNG export project.