Phoenix South-bound rig reaches South Africa

The Transocean-owned GSF Development Driller-1 semi-submersible drilling, set to drill the Phoenix South-3 well offshore Australia for Quadrant Energy, has reached South Africa.

Quadrant Energy, the operator of the Phoenix project off Western Australia, contracted Transocean’s sixth generation drilling rig DD-1 in July 2017.

Carnarvon Petroleum, Quadrant’s partner in the project, said in a statement on Thursday that the rig started its tow to the well location from the northern hemisphere and has now reached South Africa where it will undertake scheduled maintenance.

Once maintenance work is complete, the rig will then be towed to the Phoenix South-3 location. According to previous estimates, the well start window is between February 1 and April 1, 2018.

Carnarvon said that the Phoenix South-3 well was designed to evaluate the gas and condensate discovered at the top of the Caley interval in the Phoenix South-2 well, which is located within the WA-435-P exploration permit in the North-West Shelf of Australia.

The Phoenix South-3 well will be drilled some 560 meters north-northeast of the Phoenix South-2 well and has been designed to evaluate the Caley interval. This interval contained gas and condensate in the Phoenix South-2 well but couldn’t be fully evaluated due to Caley interval pressures being greater than those planned for in the well design.

The company added that the Phoenix South Caley structure was estimated to contain a gross mean recoverable prospective resource of 489 Bscf of gas and 57 million barrels of associated condensate, the equivalent of 143 million barrels of oil, gross, Pmean.

Carnarvon also stated that the JV partners had several options under consideration for potential development of the Phoenix project resources.

Namely, the Phoenix South and Roc resources could be combined into a single gas condensate development. Currently, the Roc structure volume is estimated to be at the minimum economic field threshold.

The Roc structure has an estimated 332 Bscf of gas and 20 million barrels of associated condensate. The Roc-2 well performed a flow test in 2016 and achieved a rate of 53 mmscf/d and 2,943 barrels of condensate per day which was the maximum flow rates possible using the test equipment.