Cooper draws up drilling targets offshore Australia

Cooper Energy plans to step up development, appraisal, and exploration in the Otway and Gippsland basins offshore southeast Australia.

“One of our major tasks for the year will be the preparation of the financial year 2020 offshore drilling campaign to bring the next wave of growth after Sole,” said managing director David Maxwell.

Sole is a gas field currently under development as a subsea tieback directly to the Orbost gas plant.

Opportunities in the proposed FY20 programme are: the Manta-3 appraisal and exploration well, which should support an investment decision on the field’s development as a second phase project alongside Sole; a development well to lift production from the Henry field and two exploration wells in gas-prone offshore Otway basin acreage.

Sole-4, the second development well of the current project, was completed last week. “The successful completion of Sole-3 and Sole-4 has closed the project drilling workstream,” Mr Maxwell said.

“Well and reservoir performance were more than sufficient for the design throughput, and gas composition well below plant design ceiling. We look forward to commencing the pipelay in October to connect the wells to the plant.

“The project continues to proceed within schedule and budget. We are now within 12 months of the start-up of Sole and the forecast ramp-up in our annual gas production of five times.”

Source: Offshore Magazine