NZOG exploration manager Eric Matthews said from Sydney that the main target would be the Kapuni C Sands, found at depths of approximately 2850m within the Opito prospect. The area of the mapped closure extended over 44sqkm and had the potential to hold over 200 million barrels of recoverable oil.
The Century Drilling Rig 2 was expected to spud the well on April 20, with the target horizon likely to be encountered by late May.
Opito-1 is the first exploration well in the PEP38729 licence area and follows the 1993 offshore Waihi-1 well, some 20km to the southwest, which encountered good oil shows over about 400m of the Kapuni C sands.
NZOG's recent seismic amplitude mapping had demonstrated that a similarly developed sequence of Kapuni C sands might be expected within Opito, Dr Matthews added.
The Opito prospect was structurally high to Waihi-1, in a regional culmination against the overthrust, which formed the eastern margin of the Taranaki Basin.
The nearest field to Opito was the 1tcf-plus Pohokura gas field, which was also reservoired in the Kapuni C sands, some 50km to the southwest. As Opito was significantly shallower than Pohokura, it was considered more likely to contain oil, than the Pohokura reservoir which contained gas-condensate around the 3500m level.
Opito participants are NZOG subsidiary Petroleum Resources Limited (75% as operator) and Origin Energy Resources NZ Limited (25%).
