Oil Search now sees many more opportunities for increasing both oil and gas reserves in the Papuan Basin than it did 18 months ago.

At the front of the development queue, the South East Mananda oil field development is nearing completion (see yesterday’s story).

But there is also plenty of exploration and appraisal work to be done.

To the east in the Gobe production region, the company wants to confirm the promise of more oil reserves found by the recent South East Gobe-11 well. In a slightly longer time-frame it is planning to drill a new prospect called Wasuma northeast of Gobi.

Further northwest past the Hides gas field, Oil Search is also keen to return to the Juha gas/condensate discovery originally made in 1983 and now held in retention licence PRL2.

So far the field has three wells, all of which indicated a rich condensate content of 80-85 barrels per million cubic feet of gas. Gas reserves are tentatively estimated to be 4 trillion cubic feet.

But the figure is uncertain because none of the wells have found the gas/water contact. Oil Search’s program is to drill two new wells next year. The first will be designed to reach the base of the hydrocarbon column, while the second will probe the extent of the field’s northeast flank.

Any development would be tied to the Hides facilities and on to Kutubu, with gas adding to the PNG-Australia project and condensate boosting the oil revenues.

Looking further to the west the P’nyang gas/condensate field in PRL3 is another potential development, albeit in a longer time-frame. Discovered in 1990, its two wells have defined the gas/water contact. Reserves are estimated to be 2.4 trillion cubic feet of gas and 16 million barrels of condensate, but it is probable that any development plan will be preceded by further appraisal drilling.

In terms of wildcat potential in this region, Oil Search would like to explore the giant Mogulu prospect which appears as a huge surface anticline to the southwest of Juha. It lies in the more gas-prone sector of the basin and is likely to contain complex faulting in the subsurface. Even so, Oil Search has said the sheer size of the structure begs for investigation.

Back towards the oil areas, North West Paua and Arakubi are candidates for drilling in the next exploration phase.

North West Paua-1, adjacent to the Moran field, will explore a back limb identified on seismic data acquired following discovery of the Paua oil field in 1996. The North West Paua prospect is seen as less complicated than the earlier find and has potential to contain 100-150 million barrels.

Arakubi prospect, southeast of Kutubu, is of interest because of a seismic amplitude anomaly seen at the Iagifu Sandstone level that could indicate the presence of oil.

But the immediate oil focus will concentrate on confirming the South East Gobe-11 discovery which has indicated a separate fault wedge within the field that potentially contains 50 million barrels in place.

This will be followed, probably late in 2006 or early 2007, by exploration of the Wasuma prospect to the east of the Gobe complex.

Still in the waiting room, but not forgotten, are gas/condensate discoveries from the past like Pasca, Pandora and Uramu in offshore Papuan Gulf permits as well as those onshore at Barakewa and Kimu. All are under-appraised, but each one has tentative upside reserves of 1 trillion cubic feet or more.

They will be revisited in due course to support the PNG-Australia pipeline and to underpin plans for domestic downstream projects such as petrochemicals, compressed natural gas and power generation.

From Oil Search’s viewpoint, there is sufficient untapped potential in PNG to keep its exploration team busy for many years ahead.