Wellington-headquartered L&M said drilling on the shallow onshore Westland Basin well restarted early Monday afternoon from a depth of about 56m following last week's completion of the necessary repairs and upgrades, as well as a safety inspection of the Fireball Creek wellsite in licence PEP 38521.
Fireball Creek-1 will test a shallow gas structure that blew out in the nearby SFL-1 well drilled by Superior Oil in 1942. Operator L&M and its partners plan to take less than 10 days to reach the planned total depth of 450m to test an Eocene-aged Omotumotu Sandstone structure containing a potential gas resource of up to 40 billion cubic feet.
Last November, L&M farmed into the block, taking over operatorship and earning a 32.5% stake by funding 65% of the cost of drilling Fireball Creek-1.
Once the well is completed, the PEP 38521 participants will be L&M Petroleum (operator, 32.5%), Pacrim Energy (35%), McKenzie Petroleum (8.125%), EF Durkee and Associates (8.125%), GRDC (8.125%), and Labrador Energy (8.125%).
