Santos Limited said the Jack Bates arrived around 2 p.m. on Sunday near Port Lincoln on South Australia’s west coast, following a 13,000 nautical mile, 45 day voyage to Australia from Norway on the heavy-lift vessel, the Mighty Servant.

The rig was offloaded from the heavy-lift vessel in ideal water depth and weather conditions.waters north of Thistle Island and will move to drill Santos’ Amrit-1 exploration well in the offshore Otway Basin, southern Victoria.

Amrit-1 is a frontier, deepwater well to be drilled in 1450m of water and will be the first ever deepwater well to be drilled in the Otway Basin.

Santos said it is a high-risk well but has high-impact exploration potential for both oil and gas.

Santos will drill the Amrit-1 well with joint venture partners, Unocal and INPEX, with the Jack Bates scheduled to commence drilling around the middle of this month.

When operational the rig has a crew of 62 people although it can accommodate 116. The rig will also be carrying 1,000,000 litres of fuel, 250 thousand tonnes of bulk drilling fluids, 20 thousand tonnes of drilling fluid chemicals and 250 thousand tonnes of cement.

Santos said the marine riser on the Jack Bates starts from the vertical position, unlike the majority of rigs where the riser starts its travel from a horizontal position.

It is able to drill in water depths of up to 1,800 metres and can drill over a total distance of 9,144 metres.