Valaris rig gearing up for ‘main activity’ in Jadestone’s 2025 drilling program

A jack-up rig owned by offshore drilling contractor Valaris has arrived in Australia to start working on a drilling campaign for the Singapore-headquartered oil and gas player Jadestone Energy.

As disclosed by Jadestone, the Valaris 247 jack-up rig has arrived on location at the Montara field offshore Australia to drill the Skua-11 well side-track (Skua-11ST), described as the main activity in the firm’s 2025 capital program. The Valaris 247 rig can accommodate 140 people and its maximum drilling depth is 35,000 feet.

Jadestone is the 100% owner and operator of the producing Montara project, located in production licenses AC/L7 and AC/L8 in the Timor Sea, approximately 630 kilometres offshore Western Australia, in a water depth of 77 meters.

Montara operations involve the production of oil using platform production wells for the Montara field and subsea wells for the Swift, Skua, and Swallow fields. On December 31, 2023, the Montara project fields were estimated to contain gross 2P reserves of 13.6 mmbbls.

The work to be performed by the Valaris 247 jack-up encompasses the decommissioning of the existing SK-11 well, followed by drilling a side-track higher in the Skua structure to speed up the recovery of reserves from this field. The expected cost is $62 million.

Jadestone’s Executive Chairman, Adel Chaouch, said: “We are looking forward to executing drilling operations at Skua-11 safely and efficiently. Bringing this well back into production will add to the positive operational momentum we have seen so far in 2025, with Group production year to date averaging c.21,000 boe/d, slightly ahead of expectations, even after cyclone related downtime in Australia early in the year.”

The Skua-11ST program is expected to take around 60 days to complete, with an expected initial oil rate of approximately 3,500 barrels per day (bbls/d) when brought onstream. The Singapore-based player hopes this will extend the economic life of the Montara field by one year.

The environment plan (EP) for drilling activities was submitted to Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) last June.

The oil from the subsea wells forming part of the Montara project is piped via subsea flowlines to an unmanned wellhead platform and then to the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) Montara Venture, which acts as a hub for the Montara fields, and potentially other stranded discoveries in the region.

Jadestone believes the nearby Shell-operated Crux gas field, which is located approximately 30 kilometers south of the Montara Project, represents a viable export option for the “significant” undeveloped gas resource within the Montara licenses.

Another jackup, the Valaris 123, was working for Shell at the Selene prospect in the North Sea until February 2025. The UK giant recently disclosed its plan to reach a field development plan (FDP) and a final investment decision (FID) for this discovery in 2027. According to Valaris’ fleet status report, the rig then moved to the Netherlands for a contract with Taqa in February, which is scheduled to last until October 2025.