The companies have begun production testing from the Cadna-owie formation at an initial rate of 70-80 barrels per day, supplementing Beach's South Australian production entitlements from the basin's Sellicks and Acrasia oil fields. All three fields were discovered last year.
In August 2002 early wireline logs indicated the well could contain between 0.6 and 2.4 million barrels of oil according to Beach Petroleum managing director Reg Nelson. The well encountered up to 2m of oil bearing net porous sandstone in the Cadna-owie Formation and is located in PEL 95, about 75km south of Moomba, in shallow oil-bearing zones at depths of around 1,000m.
Beach has also begun road and site works for its 2003 drilling program in the Cooper Basin after rain delays. The program will begin with the Christies-1 well on June 16.
The success will slightly offset Magellan's losses from the Gregory River-3 well, which was plugged and abandoned after two months of underbalanced drilling.
A report said the well intersected some 386m of the primary objective, the Gregory Sandstone. A flow test of this section (2666m to 3050m) failed to produce any flow of natural gas.
