The well will test a structurally higher back limb location on the Paua anticline than the Paua-1x well which was drilled in the mid 1990s.
Paua-1x encountered oil shows in the Toro sandstone and recovered oil from the Iagifu sandstone but was interpreted to have been drilled on the wrong side of the structure.
NW Paua-1 has a planned total depth of 3377m and targets the Toro and Digimu sandstones in a seismically defined hanging wall structure.
Participants in NW Paua-1 are Oil Search (52.5%) and ExxonMobil (47.5%).
