The PEP 51153 joint venture's Pukatea-1 exploration well has advised that the Nova-1 rig will be mobilised mid-January ahead of a January 23 spud in the onshore Taranaki Basin.
In what partner Melbana Energy (30%) CEO Peter Stickland described as an "added bonus", a technical assessment of the well's objectives by operator Tag (70%) has identified a secondary objective in the shallower Mt Mesengar sands from the Tikorangi limestone primary objective.
That reassessment also demonstrated there was now a roughly 50% probability that the well will intersect moveable hydrocarbons in the Mt Messenger sands, where oil was first discovered in 2012 in Puka-1 and produced from Puka-1 and Puka-2 under an extended production test until January 2015.
The well previously had a 19% geological chance of success.
However, those wells are currently shut in.
That assessment has encouraged the JV to make technical adjustments to the drilling plan, including adding another wireline logging run for data gathering and another casing string to isolate the Mt Messenger formation.
If moveable hydrocarbons are hit in the Mt Messenger formation as expected, the JV can then assess the technical and commercial merits of aggregating the suspended Puka field's production potential.
All this means Melbana's share of the Pukatea-1 well costs have risen $400,000 to $2 million, excluding production testing.
"The onshore Pukatea prospect represents a very exciting exploration drilling opportunity for Melbana and we are looking forward to commencing drilling shortly," Stickland said.
"The addition of a secondary objective is an added bonus as any secondary discovery in the shallower Mt messenger formation may support the economics of re-starting the currently suspended oil production from the Puka field.
He said , a discovery had the potential to be "very significant" for Melbana shareholders given the Pukatea prospect's potential size.
Pukatea's prospective resource range from 1.3-4 million barrels to a best estimate of 12.4MMboe.
Melbana was trading up by more than 14% at 1.6c this morning.
