At 6am on today, the well was at 243.5m and Oil Search was preparing to drill ahead in a 14.75-inch hole. During the week the 18.5 hole was drilled to 243.5m and 16-inch casing was set.
Juha-5 is 40km northwest of the Hides gas field. It has no road access and its location makes exploration very difficult.
Discovered in 1984, Juha is still undeveloped because of its remoteness. Even getting a helicopter into the site can be difficult with dense cloud sometimes causing staff to be stranded for up to two months.
Juha will need substantial reserves to justify the high development costs; Oil Search and ExxonMobil are hoping to prove up to 4Tcf of gas and 150MMbbl of condensate.
Oil Search sees Juha as the potential feed source for a proposed liquids cycling plant that has a preliminary capital cost estimate of about $850 million for production of around 45,000bpd.
“Three wells drilled on the Juha structure in the early 1980s proved the presence of a condensate-rich gas accumulation,” Oil Search said today.
“No gas-water contact was found in these wells and Juha-5 will drill deeper on the structure with the aim of constraining the vertical gas column height.”
The well is targeting the Toro reservoir at a depth of about 3000m. Planned total depth is 3700m.
“The well will be followed in early 2007 by a second well which will drill a large, untested segment adjacent to the proven segment,” Oil Search said.
“The objective of the two wells is to increase considerably both the proven and probable reserves.”
The participants in Juha 5 are: Oil Search 31.5%, ExxonMobil 56% and Merlin Petroleum 12.5%. While ExxonMobil is operator of the PRL 2 permit, Oil Search is operating the Juha wells.
