Transocean rig running late to get to Phoenix South well

Transocean’s GSF Development Driller-1 drilling rig is late but on its way to drill the Phoenix South-3 well for Quadrant Energy. The rig is in the final stage of its journey from Port Louis (Mauritius) to Australia.

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 where it was supposed to undertake scheduled maintenance at the beginning of February and headed to the Phoenix South-3 well location in early March.

The initial plan was for the rig to arrive on location in late March in order to be ready to start drilling in early April.

However, on Thursday, March 29 Carnarvon said that towing speeds have had a minor impact on the original expected arrival date, particularly the consequence of cyclone Marcus passing in front of the planned tow route.

The rig is now expected to arrive on location around April 5, 2018 and be ready to start drilling around April 10, 2018.

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.

This 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).