Drilling crews started running the seven-inch casing liner from about the 2810m depth on Sunday afternoon right down to the 4500m target depth within the Kapuni group sandstones formation. Good progress was made during Monday, with the crews due to finish setting the casing during the night.
Several kilograms of thick waxy crude, a typical Taranaki oil, were recovered last week after the Parker Drilling Rig 188 had broken through the Murihiku Supergroup basement thrust which was prognosed to overlay the prospective Tertiary Kapuni section.
However, this morning Indo-Pacific was in a less guarded mood than last week, saying testing and/or further drilling was likely.
"No decision has been made yet whether to conduct any drill stem tests, but is likely to be made Tuesday afternoon," said Indo-Pacific chief executive Dave Bennett in Wellington.
He said high gas levels and some oil shows were encountered as the well went through the increasingly fractured basement overthrust. But after the well had gone through the basement and into the Eocene-aged Kapuni formation, it hit drilling problems and had drilling mud losses into the sandstones.
Huinga-1B is being directionally drilled from the existing Huinga 1 well bore, to target the Tariki sandstones and Kapuni group sandstones at a location approximately 550 metres west of the Huinga-1 well site n PEP 38716. The well has so far recorded good oil shows, with several sandstone beds being intersected within a gross 120m section of Kapuni sediments. Good oil and gas shows have also been recorded over the bottom 250m of the well.
Recent media reports have highlighted the fact that Huinga is close to the nearby commercial Waihapa field, which has produced over 27 million barrels of oil.
However, Bennett said no analogies could be made between the two fields as they were quite different.
Having the Waihapa production station and pipelines nearby will, however, aid any development decision should Huinga-1B prove commercial.
Swift Energy's Rimu oil strike, further south in onshore Taranaki, was New Zealand's first hydrocarbon discovery of the decade.
