Commercial Taranaki oil and gas find for TAG

Thursday 4th November 2010 1 Comment

Canadian oil and gasfield developer TAG Oil is moving to commercialise an oil and gas find in the Mt Messenger formation, and is targeting look-alike formations nearby.

The decision follows 10 days of testing on oil and gas shows from the Sidewinder-1 well, which initially found only natural gas, but has since been producing increasing quantities of water-free crude oil.

"This is one of the strongest flow rates recorded from the Mt Messenger Formation in Taranaki,” said TAG’s chief executive Garth Johnson said. “Our technical team has identified numerous look-alike prospects from 3-D seismic to drill within our 7910 acre exploration permit area, with many being reachable from the same Sidewinder surface location.

“We will now proceed with plans to commercialize this discovery and initiate full-time production as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible," Johnson said.

Sidewinder-1 was drilled to a total depth of 1601m and encountered 14 meters of net oil and gas bearing sandstones.

Stabilized flow rates of 8.5 million cubic feet of gas plus 44 barrels of oil per day for a total of 1461 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and a tubing restricted maximum gas flow rate of 13 million cubic feet per day.

TAG also reported its Cheal-BH-1 horizontal well has now reached total depth of 2285m, including a 550m horizontal section within the Mt. Messenger Formation (1735-2285m), and that uphole mudlogs have recorded better than expected oil and gas shows within the secondary Urenui Formation target at a depth of approximately 1400m.

“In the Mt. Messenger horizontal section of the well, a total of 430m of continuous reservoir penetration is interpreted with high oil and gas readings during the drilling operations, which are complete.TAG is now starting afive-stage fracture stimulation programme, which it is deploying to seek harder to reach deposits in the Cheal exploration area.

Businesswire.co.nz

Comments from our readers

On 21 November 2010 at 7:33 pm Don't kill me said:

So is New Zealand going to get any of this gas? Or is it only going to be shipped offshore? And is the price of NZ gas going to drop? Right now we're being robbed.