After paying somewhere near $30,000 per day for rigs like Century's Rig 24 - now drilling Hovea for Arc and Origin - cost overruns when wells experience delays like Woodada 18 and 19 can severely test the budgets of small exploration companies. The rig will be renamed the Logue rig and will be earmarked for workovers, completions and drilling shallower prospects.
Hardman chief Ted Ellyard said he expected to recover the cost of the rig within two workovers. He said they had a drilling manager John Maas on board and would be looking for an external contractor to manage the drilling crew.
Partner Bounty Oil & Gas NL said in a statement that testing for oil at the Woodada-19 well should begin by the middle of next week, around 10 July.
The well was suspended as an oil discovery in the first week of June after recovering trace amounts of oil from sandstones in the 'lower zones' between 2733 and 2793 metres depth while good gas shows were encountered in the producing Carynginia gas zone at about 2200m.
Bounty said considerable volumes of drilling mud (over 1,000 barrels) had been lost into the sandstones whilst drilling, indicating good reservoir permeability in the lower zones.
The well was then cased, and the potential lower oil zones perforated. However, initial testing recovered only drilling mud with traces of oil, according to Bounty.
In order to determine if commercial volumes of oil can be recovered from the lower zones and to do the necessary testing at a lower cost, the joint venture decided to suspend the well and release the Century Drilling rig.
"If the testing shows the lower zones contain commercial oil, the well will be completed for production as a new field oil discovery well, otherwise, they will be cemented and the well will be completed for production and testing over the Carynginia gas zone," Bounty said.
