West Mereenie-18 will be drilled to a target depth of 1,225 into the Pacoota Sandstone reservoirs using air/foam to minimise damage to the formation, according to Magellan.
The Mereenie field is located 240 kilometres west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory. It has been producing since 1987 with over 60 wells having been drilled on the field. It is currently producing around 1000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) and around 30 million cubic feet of gas per day. Interests in Mereenie are Santos (operator) 65% and Magellan 35%.
The two partners have also been busy in other parts of the world.
Santos has plugged and abandoned two wells in the last week – the Callister-1 gas wildcat in the Otway Basin, offshore Victoria and the Sutherland-1 gas delineation well in Matagorda County, Texas. Two other wells – Stilton-1, a Queensland Copper Basin gas wildcat, and Jeruk-2/ST2, an oil appraisal/discovery well in offshore Indonesia – were held up by rig repairs.
Magellan is also a partner in the Hihi-1 exploration well in New Zealand’s offshore Taranaki Basin. The well reached a total depth of 1,936 metres without finding significant hydrocarbons. But a sidetrack operation is now being undertaken to evaluate whether the hydrocarbons found in the secondary objective will be present in commercial quantities in a nearby updip location.
Interests in Hihi are Tap (NZ) Pty Ltd 50% (operator), Magellan 25% and Austral Pacific Energy (NZ) Limited 25%.
