First Well Spudded at Oz Sole Project
Australian Cooper Energy has spudded its first well at its Sole Gas Project in the Gippsland Basin offshore the state of Victoria, the company said May 2.
Sole-3 is the first of two production wells to be drilled by the Ocean Monarch on the Sole gas field as part of the A$605mn project, which is developing new supply for the tight south-east Australian market.
Cooper, which holds 100% equity in the Sole gas field, is undertaking the A$355mn (US$267mn) offshore development, while APA Group is conducting a A$250mn upgrade to the onshore Orbost gas processing plant to enable processing of gas from sole (shown above, courtesy of Cooper Energy).
The field is being developed to supply about 24 petajoules (641mn m3) of gas per year from mid-2019, with about 75% of the field’s reserves contracted to a range of utility and industrial customers including AGL Energy, EnergyAustralia, Alinta Energy, and O-I Australia.
The drill rig, US driller Diamond Offshore's Ocean Monarch, moved to the Sole project after having completed the workover of Cooper’s Casino-5 project also in the Otway Basin last week. The move from Casino-5 to Sole was delayed by unusually heavy ocean conditions but Cooper said it would not impact the timeline for completion of the Sole project.
The work programme at Sole-3, which includes drilling, installation of a subsea production tree, an open hole gravel pack completion and clean up flow testing, is expected to take some 30 days.
Once Sole-3 is completed it will be followed immediately by work on Sole-4 which is similar in design, accessing a different part of the same reservoir.