The Stena Clyde drilling rig, which was handed over to AED last Sunday, is currently being mobilised from the Woollybutt Oil Field on the North-West Shelf, about 1400km southeast of the Puffin field.

AED announced in mid-November that rig refurbishment delays in Singapore and government conditions stipulating that environmental approval was needed before production can begin, had caused delays and uncertainty at Puffin.

The company is still awaiting a response from the Northern Territory and Commonwealth authorities in regard to the Puffin field development plan and an application for a production license.

The Stena Clyde rig will firstly spud the Puffin-9 exploration well, located on a separate structure off the main Puffin horst block, about 1.8km south of the 1974 Puffin-2 well.

Puffin-2 tested 4608 barrels of oil per day from late Cretaceous sandstones. Puffin-9 will test multiple reservoir objectives, including sandstones within the Triassic, Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary sections mapped using recent pre-stack depth migration reprocessing of the 1998 Onnia 3D seismic survey.

The well is expected to take about 27 days to reach a total depth of 3145m, AED said.

Following Puffin-9, the rig will move to the Puffin-7 well site to spud a production well in the north-eastern area of the proven Puffin Oil Field. Development of the field, which includes constructing production infrastructure for Puffin-7, is planned to start shortly, the company said.

The Puffin field lies in Ashmore Cartier permit AC/P22 within the Vulcan Sub-basin and about 80km southwest of the Jabiru and Challis fields.

The geology is complex and AED is targeting two separate reservoir sands in features with four-way dip closure within the horst structure for its development program. The company will target two more sands in the nearby downthrown graben area for the accompanying exploration work.