The Vancouver-headquartered company said it had perforated a Miocene-aged interval from 1776.5-1786m for testing after early this year encountering hydrocarbon shows over several shallow zones.
“We had some gas to flare, as well as some formation water,” company president Drew Cadenhead told PetroleumNews.net.
“Given the remote location of this wildcat well, TAG deemed the gas flow rates to be uneconomical. We are a little disappointed to get gas after the earlier very solid oil shows.”
He said the well flowed at rates of less than 1 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd). Flows of at least 5-10MMcfd would have been needed to make Mangamingi-1 economic, given that it was in rugged bushland more than 10km away from any gas pipelines.
“We are still very optimistic that this new hydrocarbon fairway will enable commercial discoveries to be made, but we are not sure when,” Cadenhead said.
“We need to do some more stratigraphic work. Follow-up technical work is already underway to high-grade areas of potential oil accumulation in this newly identified fairway.”
Cadenhead had said Mangamingi-1, in licence PEP 38758 (TAG 100%), had confirmed TAG’s theory of oil migration through the underlying wedge of thrusted basement sediments and accumulation in the overlying shallow Miocene sediments in under-explored eastern Taranaki.
Meanwhile, at the Cheal oil field operator Austral Pacific Energy and TAG are currently testing the Cheal-B2 well.
Cheal-B2, the third of four production wells being drilled in the small oil field, was producing about 150 barrels of oil per day (bopd) and 100MMcfd of gas. Other wells to be production tested had been Cheal-B3, which flowed at rates of 450bopd, and Cheal-B1, which flowed at rates of 133bopd and 225MMcfd of gas.
Austral (69.5%) and TAG (30.5%) are spending about $NZ25 million ($A22.25 million) developing the Cheal field in mining licence in PMP 38156. Construction of permanent production facilities is scheduled to be completed by mid-year.
