Australian energy company Santos will drill the Santos Roc South-1 exploration well located offshore Australia immediately after Dorado-2 well in 2019.
Roc South-1 is situated in the WA-437-P Permit. The joint venture partners are Carnarvon with a 20% interest and Santos Limited, the operator, with an 80% interest.
The decision to drill the well was announced by Carnarvon Petroleum on Tuesday, January 29.
Carnarvon said that the well would be drilled immediately after the nearby Dorado-2 appraisal well is completed and the Noble Tom Prosser jack-up rig will then finish its 2019 drilling campaign for the joint venture with the Dorado-3 appraisal well. The drilling of the first well is scheduled to start around April 2019.
According to Carnarvon, Roc South has a very similar geological trap structure to Dorado and like Dorado is situated up-dip of the Roc structure.
Given the very similar seismic characteristics between Dorado and Roc South, and what is anticipated to be an identical oil sourcing mechanism, the Roc South prospect has a relatively high chance of geological success of 63%. With the crest of Roc South being around 13 km from the crest of the Dorado structure, drilling success at Roc South would likely result in this structure being developed with the Dorado field.
Managing Director, Adrian Cook , said: “The addition of the Roc South-1 well to the 2019 drilling campaign makes a great deal of sense given the large size of the prospect and the high chance of discovery by industry standards.”
“The joint venture has ambitions to make a Final Investment Decision to develop the Dorado field in 2020 and given the close proximity, Carnarvon anticipates that success at Roc South would mean it would likely form part of the world class Dorado project.”