The Wellington-headquartered company also announced plans today to drill two new wells in onshore Taranaki early next year, as well as the expected awarding of a new exploration licence in Papua New Guinea next to its Douglas gas-condensate discovery.
Austral said it intended to drill again in the small onshore Taranaki Kahili field (PMP 38153), which was production suspended in late 2004.
Infill seismic suggested the crest of the Kahili structure was about 100m higher to the northeast of the existing Kahili 1A-B well and Austral intended drilling into this up-dip potential during the first quarter of 2007, targeting the Tariki sandstones.
“As production facilities have been established in the field, production will be able to be achieved with minimal flows,” the company said.
Austral also said today the small onshore Taranaki Cheal oil field had now produced over 19,137 barrels of oil since production testing restarted in late July.
Cheal partners Austral (69.5%) and TAG Oil (30.5%) are spending $NZ25 million ($A22 million) developing the field. First oil from permanent production facilities is expected to be about 1000 barrels of oil per day from early 2007, with full production of about 1900bopd to be reached in the second quarter.
Austral also said today it and TAG planned to drill the onshore Taranaki exploration well Ratanui-1 in licence PEP 38741 during the first quarter of 2007. This would be drilled to a depth of 2100m, targeting the SN2 and SN3 zones in the Mount Messenger and upper Moki sandstones.
TAG has said Ratanui-1, together with the two nearby existing wells from last year's small Supplejack gas-condensate discovery, should provide a reserve base sufficient to warrant economic development.
In addition, Austral said it had applied for a 2562 square kilometre offshore permit, about 60km north of Nelson in the South Island.
It said the sub-basin was a fault-bounded asymmetrical half-graben with a 6000m succession of sediments. The northeastern part was interpreted to contain some 4000m of Pakawau and Kapuni group coals, much of which were interpreted to be within the oil generative window.
The proposed work program was to acquire an aeromagnetic survey over the entire permit area, followed by marine seismic.
Austral further said a seismic survey within Papua New Guinean permit PPL235, containing the Douglas discovery, had been done and data used to delineate the Douglas structure and to confirm suitable appraisal well locations. The data would also be used to delineate Puk Puk and other prospects.
An adjacent new permit, APPL261, had been offered to Austral and its award was expected shortly.
Last August, Austral and British partner (and operator) Rift Oil said the greater Douglas structure covers more than 40sq.km and could contain several hundred billion cubic feet of gas.
