Wellington-headquartered Austral Pacific Energy on Saturday said the vertical Hihi-1 had been deepened beyond its unsuccessful upper Mt Messenger target to test for sandstones in the lower Mt Messenger. It had subsequently hit 15m of reservoir quality Miocene-aged sandstones containing enough hydrocarbon indications to justify drilling a sidetrack.

Hihi-1A is now scheduled to intersect this reservoir in about a week, at a high point on the Jersey Prospect that Austral had previously mapped and identified, but offset approximately 600m northeast of the surface location of the well.

Austral also said production testing of Cheal-4 well was now scheduled to start Thursday in the nearby PEP 38738 licence, with the initial two-month test program planned for two identified pay zones. Cheal-3 would also be put on resumed production testing at some stage during this time.

Austral added that the onshore Taranaki Kahili-1A well continued to underperform. Gas rates are now typically around 0.5 mmscf/d and the well was being cycled to assist condensate lifting.

Independent analysis showed the well was depleting a fault-bounded compartment low on the southern end of the field, with connection to the larger volume of the field to the north being limited.

But Austral’s consultants had just completed remapping the field, incorporating recently acquired and processed seismic. This had increased the volumetric estimate of total gas by about 50%, giving “a good match” with original estimates of field reserves.

The remapping had also identified the possibility that an additional fault compartment at the crest of the structure might hold several times as much gas as the present field volume. Austral was investigating accessing that predicted larger volume, either through a Kahili-2 well intersecting the field over 100m higher or deviating the existing Kahili-1A well.