Chief operating officer John Sturgess told PetroleumNews.net that Moturoa-5 – spudded last month – had reached the planned target depth and following some hydrocarbon shows, it was now being cased, with production tubing being run, ready for testing.
He declined to specify the exact depth reached or the nature of the hydrocarbon shows encountered.
But he did say that Auckland-headquartered Greymouth had also set a conductor and intermediate casing at the coastal well site, in licence PEP 38464, in preparation for spudding Moturoa-6 early next year.
“Moturoa-6 will appraise explore shallower zones under the port area; Moturoa-5 did the deeper stuff,” Sturgess said.
Greymouth drilled Moturoa-5 from reclaimed land at the port and deviated the well under the harbour, targeting multiple objectives inside and outside the port boundary, down to the Miocene-aged Moki Formation.
Moturoa-5 was the first New Zealand well drilled by the Nabors International Drilling Rig 647 – now renamed Greymouth Drilling Rig 2 – that Greymouth imported from Australia earlier this year after it was stacked for several years since last working on Western Australia’s Barrow Island.
Sturgess had earlier said the likely maximum target depth would be about 2600m but declined to give any pre-drill estimates of possible recoverable reserves.
Today he said the company’s other rig, Greymouth Rig 1, would finish drilling Moturo-6 after testing on Moturoa-5 had finished early next year, and Rig 2 would soon be moving inland to drill the Ngatoro-13 well from the Tabla site within the Ngatoro mining licence PMP 38148.
Greymouth and its former Ngatoro partners New Zealand Oil & Gas and Indo-Pacific Energy (now Austral Pacific Energy) drilled Tabla-1 in late 2002, encountering a 10m gross hydrocarbon-bearing interval below 1419m within the Miocene-aged Mount Messenger Formation.
Greymouth operates licence PEP 38464, which covers both onshore and offshore areas and includes the historic Moturoa oil field, and holds 98% equity. Local Maori group Ngati Te Whiti Hapu Society owns the remaining 2% interest.
The Moturoa field, one of the first in the British Empire, produced about 250,000 barrels of oil over several decades before it was closed in 1972.
