The Perth-based company said the permeability results in particular were encouraging, being the equivalent or better than similar areas in Australia.
It expects to receive final results, including gas composition data, from the Aberavon-1 well later this month.
Aberavon-1, in Port Talbot in south Wales, was drilled to a total depth of 428.91m, having intersected 12 seams of between 0.25m and 2.35m for a combined thickness of 15.81m, Eden said.
However, the company believes the well only intersected about half of the coal measures as “very poor” ground conditions caused it to stop drilling prematurely.
“The hole encountered substantial drilling problems, with very poor ground conditions and excessive caving caused by widespread and unexpected local thrust faulting, with steep dips in places,” the company said.
“Unfortunately the hole could not be continued to the base of the coal measures sequence where thicker and gassier seams were expected.
“The faulting has complicated interpretation of the stratigraphy, but the current interpretation shows that only about half of the coal measures were intersected at Port Talbot.”
Despite the difficult ground conditions, Eden said the core recoveries were excellent, with high quality samples obtained from all of the coal seams intersected.
While Eden was unable to do permeability tests on deeper zones in Aberavon-1, the company said the starting values in this hole suggest deeper seams will have permeabilities suitable for commercial CSM development.
The company compared the potential of this project to the CSM environment in Australia.
“In the Australian context, where gas prices are much lower and infrastructure development costs, such as pipelines, are much higher, permeability values down to 5 metres are considered attractive for options such as surface to inseam development and-or fraccing,” the company said.
“The South Wales Project also enjoys the benefits of potential customers and pipelines already ready in place within the licence area coupled with significantly higher gas prices than Australia.
“Consequently, a broader range of development options and commercial opportunities are available.”
The company is now moving the rig to spud the next well, Llangeinor-1, which is expected to take three to four weeks to drill to a total depth of 800m.
“The test results from Llangeinor-1 are of particular interest for the longer term prospectivity of PEDL 100 since depths of the coal seams in this hole are similar to much of the area of the licence,” Eden said.
Eden is earning a 50% interest in three exploration and development licenses – PEDL100, PEDL148 and PEDL149 – which cover 430 square kilometres.
