Oil Search begins new hunt for gas

Business, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday 03rd Febuary 2012

THE search for additional gas reserves to enable the PNG LNG project to double the size of its current US$15.7 billion export facility has begun.
It started with the spudding of the P’nyang South well just north of Juha in the Hela province.
Oil Search said it spudded the P’nyang South well on Jan 29 following the recent completion of a 2-D seismic program over the area.
The P’nyang South-1 well is located 4km southwest of the P’nyang 1-X gas discovery and 90km northwest of the Juha gas field.
Oil Search is the operator with a 38.5% stake together with ExxonMobil (49%), JX Nippon (12.5%).
The seismic and well results would be used to assess the potential gas resources in P’nyang before the Rig 103 was moved to the nearby Trapia well pad site, which was already being prepared for its first wildcat well.
Further drilling at the huge Hides gas field, where the gas resources had yet to be fully delineated, will follow these two wells.
The well, likely to commence in the third quarter of this year, will test the gas-water contact in the well.
Industry sources said these three drilling programmes would basically determine if there was enough additional gas reserves for ExxonMobil to build the third and possibly fourth LNG trains at the export plant now under construction just outside Port Moresby.
They said the P’nyang structure alone could potentially contain up to two trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas.
The LNG consortium will need to discover an additional five to six trillion cubic feet of gas to build two additional LNG trains.
Oil Search had indicated that together with its exploration and drilling activities in the oilfields and the Gulf of Papua, the current exploration campaign will be the biggest and most intense it has ever conducted in this country.