Transocean rig on its way to drill Phoenix South well for Quadrant

Transocean-owned semi-submersible drilling rig GSF Development Driller-1 has started the final leg of its journey from Port Louis (Mauritius) to Australia on the way to drill the Phoenix South-3 well for Quadrant Energy. 

Quadrant is the operator of the Phoenix project off Western Australia with an 80% interest and Carnarvon Petroleum is its partner with the remaining 20% interest.

To remind, the rig reached South Africa at the beginning of February where it was scheduled to undertake maintenance before heading to the Phoenix well location.

Carnarvon informed on Thursday that slower than planned towing speeds have had a minor impact on the original expected arrival date. The rig is now expected to arrive on location in late March and be ready to start drilling in early April.

The objective of the Phoenix South-3 well is to assess the gas and condensate discovered at the top of the Caley interval in the 2017 Phoenix South-2 well. The well is to be located only some 560 meters from the Phoenix South-2 well.

The Phoenix South-3 well design has been constructed to specifically allow for the evaluation of this Caley interval, unlike the Phoenix South-2 well that was designed to evaluate a broader range of reservoir intervals.

The Phoenix South structure at the Caley interval is estimated to contain a gross mean recoverable prospective resource of 489 Bscf of gas and 57 million barrels of associated condensate (being 143 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), gross, Pmean).

The estimated condensate-to-gas ratio is very significant and is based on surface gas sampling from a permeable section at the top of the Caley Sandstone encountered while drilling the Phoenix South-2 well, Carnarvon explained.

The gas and condensate is in addition to that already discovered and initially appraised in the Roc structure, also in the Caley interval. That structure is estimated to contain a gross contingent resource (2C) of 332 Bscf of gas and 19 million barrels of associated condensate (being 74 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), gross, 2C).