Drilling Program Update
TAG preps Taranaki drilling program
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Monday, 19 September 2011
Neil Ritchie, New Zealand
NEW Zealand-focused Canadian junior TAG Oil is planning to appraise its oil and gas discovery in the onshore Taranaki area previously known as Cardiff, as well as drilling four more development wells in the nearby Cheal oil field.
Chief operating officer Drew Cadenhead told EnergyNewsBulletin in New Plymouth this morning that TAG was moving the Ensign Rig 19 to the Cheal C wellsite just south of Stratford and hoped to spud Cheal-C2 next weekend.
This followed the successful drilling and testing of the initial Cheal-C1 exploration well, in its 100%-controlled exploration lease PEP 38156, earlier this year.
Cheal-C1 intercepted oil and gas-bearing sands in the Miocene-aged Mount Messenger Formation and the well subsequently flowed 1.5-3 million cubic feet per day of clean dry gas during testing.
There were also “substantial volumes” of light oil produced during swab testing but Cadenhead said at that time that it was difficult to measure volumes of oil produced due to the waxy crude solidifying.
However, TAG estimates production capabilities from Cheal-C1 to be similar to the nearby sidetracked Cheal-B4ST well that flowed 360 barrels of oil plus 240 thousand cubic feet of gas per day.
Today Cadenhead told ENB that Cheal-C2 would target both the Mt Messenger and the shallower Miocene-aged Urenui Formation but not the deeper Moki Formation, where Cheal-C1 encountered strong oil shows within a 73m-thick sandstone section, as this zone proved non-commercial on testing.
“This is going to be a fair stretch in directional drilling work; the well will have a total measured depth of about 2200 metres but a true vertical depth of only about 1800 metres.”
TAG's technical interpretation indicated that Cheal-C1 penetrated a "transitional zone" where oil migrated through the contacted zone into a large structural closure, updip from the Cheal-C1 penetration.
It is believed Cheal-C2 will target this updip structure.
Operator Shell New Zealand drilled the original Cardiff-1 well in 1992 and encountered hydrocarbon shows in both the Urenui and Mount Messenger formations.
Cadenhead also said that after Cheal-C2 had been completed, the rig would move to the nearby Cheal field, in mining lease PMP 38156, to start the first of four development appraisal wells – Cheal-A8 and 9, and Cheal-B5 and 6.
“We are marching out from the present producing discovery areas and hope to discover more pools we can commercialise.”
TAG was looking to test only the Urenui sands with the Cheal-A8 and 9 wells, but both the Urenui and Mt Messenger with Cheal-B5 and 6, and hoped to finish this latest Cheal campaign by Christmas.
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