Flow testing had been scheduled to start late this week, but this morning Indo-Pacific Energy chief executive Dave Bennett said from Wellington that there were now essentially two options facing the partners.
One option was to test just the 130m or so of the Kapuni sequence already encountered above the 4390m mark, as the interval from about 2810m to 4390m had already been cased and cemented.
The other option involved opening up the hole, drilling down to the original target depth of 4500m and logging that interval. The partners would then decide on the most appropriate testing program after evaluating the results of that logging. Dr Bennett declined to comment further.
Though Huinga-1B is proving something of a complex well to drill, industry commentators say there is a lot of potential upside. The well has so far recorded good oil shows, with several sandstone beds being intersected within a gross 130m section of Kapuni sediments. Good oil and gas shows have also been recorded over the bottom 250m of the well.
There have also been high mud losses reported while drilling down to 4390m, as the well went through an increasingly fractured basement overthrust. In addition, commentators say up to half the 4390m-4500m interval appears to be sandstones and shales, which might also be hydrocarbon bearing.
The most comprehensive program would consist of drilling down to 4500m, logging and then testing all Kapuni sands encountered, as well as those parts where there were high mud losses. A minimal program would involve only testing the 130m of sands encountered above 4390m.
A mid-case scenario - of testing all the Kapuni formation - seems most likely and, if oil flows to surface, then isolated zones within that sequence should be tested later this month.
Several kilograms of thick waxy crude, a typical Taranaki oil, were recovered from the well last week after the Parker Drilling Rig 188 broke through the Murihiku Supergroup basement thrust which was prognosed to overlay the prospective Tertiary Kapuni section.
Huinga-1B is being directionally drilled from the existing Huinga 1 well bore, to target the Kapuni group sandstones at a location approximately 550 metres west of the Huinga-1 well site in PEP 38716. Huinga is on the eastern margin trend, the prospectivity of which has been established by the more southern onshore Rimu and Kauri discoveries, and further enhanced by the results of the recently drilled and suspended Makino-1 well.
