Santos has completed the appraisal of the Corvus field, confirming the presence of significant gas resources in Corvus-2 exploration well in the Carnarvon Basin, offshore Western Australia.
Image: Santos owns 100% interest in the Corvus-2 field, and is located in petroleum permit WA-45-R. Photo: Courtesy of C Morrison from Pixabay.
Santos owns 100% interest in the appraisal well, which is located in petroleum permit WA-45-R, approximately 90km northwest of Dampier in Commonwealth waters and reached a total depth of 3,998mts.
According to the company, the well intersected a gross interval of 638mts, marking one of the largest columns ever discovered across the North West Shelf. Wireline logging till date has established 245 meters of net hydrocarbon pay across the target reservoirs in the North Rankin and Mungaroo formations, between 3,360 and 3,998mts.
In addition, higher permeability zones have been observed from initial pressure sampling completed in the well than encountered in Corvus-1 and comparatively, initial samples acquired from Corvus-2 has indicated a higher condensate gas ratio of up to 10bbl/mmscf and a similar CO2 content of 7%.
Santos managing director and chief executive officer Kevin Gallagher said: “Corvus-2 has delivered a fantastic result and has opened up a number of additional exploration opportunities in the region. It is particularly exciting to have realised a higher liquids content and significantly bigger resource volume than we expected.
“Corvus could be tied back to either our Devil Creek or Varanus Island gas plants, where it has the potential to increase the utilisation of our existing facilities as well as provide backfill and extend plateau well into the 2030s.
Santos said that Corvus-2 is located approximately 3km southwest of Corvus-1, which was drilled in 2000, at a water depth of 63 meters.
The field is approximately 28km from the Reindeer platform that delivers gas to the Devil Creek domestic gas plant near Karratha, and approximately 62km to a Varanus Island tie-in point. All the three facilities are 100% owned by Santos.
Jack-up mobile offshore drilling unit, Noble Tom Prosser, was engaged to drill the well, which will be plugged and abandoned as planned after the completion of logging operations.
Gallagher added: “It’s a great start to our 2019 offshore drilling campaign, and it also highlights the value of the Quadrant acquisition and our strategy of pursuing upstream brownfield growth opportunities around existing infrastructure. The rig will now move north to commence the Dorado appraisal program.”