Early yesterday morning, the Songa Venus semi-submersible rig had drilled the Crux-2 well to a depth of 515m in a 24-inch hole.

Over the next few days, Nexus plans to drill the well ahead to the next casing point at 1150m, before continuing on to a planned total depth of 2300m.

The well has been designed to appraise the field’s gas and condensate resource to enable a development decision on the Crux liquids project, which is scheduled for mid-2007.

If successful, the well will be the first of six development wells planned on the field to recover an expected 71 million barrels (Nexus’ best estimate recoverable resources) of condensate.

Nexus is also concurrently completing front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies for the development of Crux via a floating production storage and offtake vessel.

The FEED studies are expected to be completed this month and Nexus has already begun the tender prequalification process with engineering contractors for the supply of the FPSO and the gas processing plant.

The Crux-2 well is 2km northeast of the discovery well, which encountered a 244m gas column in high quality Triassic-aged reservoirs.

The well will be drilled to an estimated total depth of 4120m subsea and has been designed to be kept as a future injection well as part of the overall development of the Crux field.

Crux-2 is intended to confirm the lateral extent of the field toward the northeast and to quantify the condensate-gas ratio and composition of the condensate for marketing purposes.

It is also aimed at confirming that the deliverability of both the A and B reservoir sands encountered at the appraisal well location are comparable to that measured by well testing in the Crux-1 well.