And the Pohokura partners - Shell New Zealand, Todd Energy and OMV/Preussag Energie - will be hoping for better hydrocarbon flows than the initial downhole analysis indicated.
Chairman of the Pohokura joint venture operating committee, Dennis Washer, told EnergyReview.Net that the war in Iraq had caused delays in getting some test equipment here from the United States. However, production testing of Pohokura South-1B should start towards the end of May and could last up to two months.
He said the testing was part of the on-going analysis of the offshore field and that, as with the more northern Pohokura-3 well, it was unlikely any test results from Pohokura South-1B would be released.
Former Mangahewa operator Fletcher Challenge Energy tested the nearby onshore Mangahewa-2 well for almost a year in the late 1990s, with the off-spec gas piped to the Methanex Motunui plant.
However, Washer said there was no arrangement with Methanex for it to take any Pohokura South-1B gas, despite the wellsite being on the edge of the Motunui complex and Methanex craving extra gas to supplement its dwindling Maui supply.
While neither the partners nor Pohokura operator Shell Todd Oil Services have so far released any results regarding Pohokura-3 or Pohokura-1B, it is known the southern sidetrack well, which was drilled from onshore but deviated about 3.7 km offshore, was not as good as the more northern Pohokura-3, which was drilled 12km offshore.
At Pohokura South-1B at least two cores were cut from within the targeted Mangahewa reservoir, part of the Eocene-aged Kapuni group, but no flow testing was done. Production testing at Pohokura-3 lasted only two days or so but was sufficient.
The trouble with the Pohokura field is that it becomes a tighter reservoir close to shore and looks very much like the over-pressured onshore Mangahewa field. FCE needed to fracc Mangahewa-2 before it flowed well.
Poor flow test results from Pohokura South-1B would be more bad news not only for the Pohokura partners but also for this country's gas sector. Early this year the mean reserves estimate for Pohokura dropped from 964 bcf of gas to about 500-600 bcf.
Then Shell NZ chairman Lloyd Taylor more recently confirmed the "centre of gravity" had moved offshore and that first gas would probably be from an offshore wellhead platform via pipeline to an onshore gas plant, but perhaps not until late 2005-early 2006.
