The new company - Whicher Range Energy - will use Advanced Well Technologies' expertise to help assess, plan and implement a field development strategy, AWT director projects and Venture Energy director Dick Ter Avest said yesterday.
Southern Amity director Brendan Egan said AWT's involvement was crucial to the new venture.
"The venture needs AWT's expertise in drilling technologies," Egan said.
"Also from a resources management point of view, it's better to have a stakeholder contributing that technological input than having to buy it on the open market.
"AWT's participation will make it much easier to develop the field cost-effectively."
The Whicher Range field, in permit EP408, was discovered in 1968.
Five wells have been drilled on the structure to date, including Whicher Range-5, the most recent attempt at validating commercialisation of the field conducted in 2003 by Amity Oil, which has since changed its name to Antares Energy and has refocused on US exploration and production.
In 2005, Antares sold Whicher Range to Egan, a former oil and gas journalist now making a career as a director of several junior petroleum developers.
There is no doubt that the Southern Perth Basin field has plenty of gas in place - somewhere between 1.5-4 trillion cubic feet - the question is whether it can be developed.
"There's plenty of gas in there, but it's as tight as a tick," Antares managing director Howard McLaughlin told this reporter in 2004, when Egan was still editor of PetroleumNews.net's predecessor, EnergyReview.
Whicher Range Energy has been formed specifically to manage and develop not only Whicher Range and the EP408 exploration permit, but also the EP381 lease, which lies immediately to the south.
"EP381 has a look-alike structure of similar size to Whicher Range," Egan said. "We plan to shoot some seismic over Whicher Range South sometime next year."
Meanwhile, at Whicher Range proper, work will begin shortly.
"We'll be turning the taps back on in the next three months," Egan said.
Two wells - Whicher Range-1 and Whicher Range-4 - remain suspended and have an immediate potential production capacity of about 1 million cubic feet per day, as estimated by an independent expert, according to Whicher Range Energy.
"WRE intends to assess the enhanced reservoir production potential and implement a pilot program designed to verify commercially sustainable production rates during 2008," the company said.
Located near the town of Busselton in a high-growth region, Whicher Range is within 20km of the low-pressure end of the Bunbury-Dampier gas transmission pipeline.
Western Australia's Department of Industry and Resources considers the field to be a critical strategic onshore gas resource, according to Whicher Range Energy.
"WRE holds a high degree of confidence in the potential to successfully liberate this important gas reserve as a strategic domestic energy resource," the company said.
Southern Amity was wholly acquired as a privately owned WA company in 2005 in order to assume operating responsibility for these permits from the previous operator, Amity Oil. It has no association with Amity Oil or Antares Energy.
