As a result, the Hurricane prospect has been classified as a new oil and gas field discovery.

Mosaic managing director Lan Vguyen said the discovery provided encouragement for further exploration of other stratigraphic prospects and leads identified by 3D seismic in the permit.

“As a stand-alone development, Hurricane is unlikely to be commercial at the present time, however the discovery is significant in that it confirms both the presence of oil and the stratigraphic trapping concept in the overall exploration permit, WA-208-P,” he said.

Preliminary interpretation of pressure data and wireline logs by operator Santos suggests the well has intersected a 20m oil column, of which 10m is net pay.

Pressure data from both this well and Hurricane-1 indicates the gas-oil contact is shallower than the intersection of the top of the reservoir in Hurricane-2.

Mosaic said these data indicate the Hurricane structure could contain at least 100m of gross gas column and up to 28m of gross oil column.

A gas sample obtained in the earlier Hurricane-1 well suggested a condensate yield of about 100 barrels per million cubic foot of gas, while the oil sample obtained in Hurricane-2 has a preliminary gravity of 30 degree API.

Santos and the JV plan to assess the discovery’s commercial viability.

Participants in the Hurricane-2 well and WA-208-P permit are: Apache Energy (34.03%), Santos (31.31%), Eni Australia (18.66%), Beach Petroleum (10%) and Mosaic Oil (6%).