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Auckland-headquartered Bridge today said Crown Minerals had awarded it and Westech a 10-year petroleum mining permit, PMP 38157. The development plan submitted to the Economic Development Ministry unit included four additional Eocene-aged Kapuni development wells to be drilled annually through to 2009.
In addition, Bridge and Westech planned to drill three shallower exploratory wells targeting Miocene-aged Mt Messenger and Tikorangi objectives.
“This mining permit is a significant milestone in the history of the company,” Bridge executive director Kevin Johnson told EnergyReview.net.
Johnson was also pleased that a recent Malkewicz Hueni Associates (MHA) report on Radnor had assigned Proved Reserves (P90) to Radnor of 16.7 PJ gas and 521,000 barrels of condensate to the upper Eocene-aged producing Kapuni sands. The discovery well, Radnor-1, was assigned reserves of 1.5 PJ of gas and 42,000 barrels condensate, solely from the Kapuni 1A and C formations .
But Proved plus Probable Reserves (P50) were 53.3 PJ gas and 1,423,000 barrels condensate – something which just might help keep methanol producer Methanex Corporation in New Zealand past next year.
Johnson declined to comment on rumours of production problems from Radnor-1, the present sole producing well, but said Bridge and Westech were continuing to supply an unspecified amount of gas to Methanex New Zealand’s Waitara Valley plant.
Methanex funded the drilling of Radnor-1 and is taking gas from the field for its sole NZ operation, the 520,000-tonne valley plant which can use up to 20PJ of gas a year.
MHA had not yet assigned any reserves to any of the deeper Radnor Kapuni sands, such as the K-3 that were being evaluated at Austral Pacific Energy’s nearby Cardiff 2A.
But Johnson said the K-3 and other sands extended across the Radnor-1 drainage area and across the Radnor-2 range. Radnor-2 would be the next well drilled.
Bridge Petroleum – headed by former Westech executives Johnson and Ed Davies – holds 66.7% equity in PMP 38157 and Westech Energy New Zealand (33.3%).
