Crown Minerals reports Todd Energy managing director Richard Tweedie as saying Todd had discovered “a lot more gas” following the drilling of Mangahewa-3.
The Ministry of Economic Development unit says Tweedie did not give any figures on the size of the “discovery” but that he said the 100% owned field was now one of the company’s major assets.
Last year, before drilling Mangahewa-3, Todd Energy said it believed Mangahewa could contain up to 250PJ of undeveloped reserves.
Todd Energy brought out a specialist Canadian crew to fracture test Mangahewa-3 earlier this year and Tweedie told PetroleumNews.net then that said one or two more Mangahewa appraisal wells could be drilled, depending on the results of fraccing program.
The Mangahewa petroleum mining licence PMP 38150 currently produces from the sole Mangahewa-2 well, which draws only from the MA-72 zone, one of several Eocene-aged tight gas intervals encountered by the discovery well.
Gas and liquids are separated at the Mangahewa-2 wellsite, with liquids processed at the nearby Todd-owned McKee production station.
Former owner-operator Fletcher Challenge Energy conducted an extensive fraccing program over several of the tight Mangahewa sands early this decade and first thought the over-pressured sands were quite widespread, perhaps even extending offshore.
Booked recoverable reserves, though, were only about 101 petajoules.
Crown Minerals also reports Tweedie as saying Todd Energy is evaluating the gas fields it holds interests in and believes up to 2000PJ of new gas can be extracted from these. This is additional to New Zealand’s current gas reserves of 2100PJ.
Todd’s gas portfolio includes Mangahewa, the more southern onshore Kapuni field (50% interest), the near-shore Pohokura field (26%) and its undeveloped offshore Karewa resource (100%).
Tweedie also said the Pohokura field, where six offshore production wells are still being drilled, was likely to yield further recoverable gas reserves.
He said there were “a lot of good signs” coming from the Pohokura wells drilled so far.
Last January, Pohokura operator Shell New Zealand listed the field’s recoverable reserves as 900PJ, though Tweedie said that figure should now exceed 1000PJ.
