Page 14 - AsianOil Week 01 2021

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BP’s dry hole offshore

Western Australia

PROJECTS & UK super-major BP’s Ironbark-1 exploration and commercial conditions were resolved, with
COMPANIES well offshore Western Australia has turned out these expected to be wrapped up in the first
to be a dry hole, the developer’s junior partners quarter. Waitsia is considered to be one of the
announced last week. country’s largest onshore discoveries in the last
The well, which lies in the WA-359-P explora- four decades.
tion permit, was drilled to a total depth of 5,618 Beach managing director Matt Kay said:
metres measured depth (MD) to intersect the “Waitsia is a world-class, low-cost, onshore gas
Mungaroo Formation. resource and we are thrilled to be growing the
Announcements from Cue Energy Beach portfolio in Western Australia.”
Resources, Beach Energy and New Zealand The second phase of development involves
Oil and Gas (NZOG) on December 29, how- drilling up to six wells as well as building a
ever, revealed that “no significant hydrocarbon new 250-TJ per day gas processing facility
shows” had been encountered. As such, BP and associated gas gathering infrastructure.
intends to plug and abandon the well in line with Total capital expenditure to first produc-
pre-drill planning. tion is anticipated to be AUD700-800mn
BP owns a 42.5% operated interest in ($536.8-613.4mn).
WA-359-P, while Cue holds 21.5%, Beach has Beach said the venture had signed a Domes-
21% and NZOG owns 15%. tic Gas Commitment Agreement (DCA) and
“Bugger…. a very disappointing result for project development deed with the WA state
us all. Ironbark was a world-scale prospect in government. The DCA includes an approval
a highly prospective address, and it needed to export up to 7.5mn tonnes of LNG until the
drilling. We got an answer, but it was not the end of 2028, while also specifying a domestic gas
one we wanted,” NZOG’s CEO, Andrew Jef- marketing obligation of 20 TJ per day during the
feries, said. He added that it would take some export period.
time before the dry hole’s implications for the The Australian independent added that
play were understood. the venture had also signed a gas process-
The Mungaroo Formation was estimated to ing agreement, tie-in agreement, product
hold a prospective recoverable resource of 15 allocation agreement and lifting and offtake
trillion cubic feet (424.8bn cubic metres). agreements with the NWS LNG partners.
While Ironbark-1’s primary target was the These agreements will allow Waitsia to supply
Deep Mungaroo, at a depth of around 5,335 around 1.5mn tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG
metres, BP had planned to test other reservoir for tolling and processing through the NWS
objectives. facilities in Karratha between the second half
“Success in Ironbark-1 would open up the of 2023 and the end of 2028.™
potential of further Deep Mungaroo prospec-
tivity along this play fairway,” Cue CEO Mat-
thew Boyall said in late October, when the well
was spudded.
WA-359-P was expected to serve as a backfill
for the existing North West Shelf (NWS) lique-
fied natural gas (LNG) export project, given that
the permit is located just 50 km from existing
infrastructure.
While the acreage’s future as a backfill
for NWS LNG appears to be off the table,
Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and Beach recently
greenlit the onshore Waitsia gas project to
serve as a new source of feedstock for the
giant export project.

Waitsia approval
Beach said on December 23 that the Waitsia joint
venture, its 50:50 partnership with Mitsui, had
reached a final investment decision (FID) on
initial funding for Waitsia’s 250 TJ (6.5mn cubic
metre) per day second phase of development.
The independent said full funding would be
committed once certain regulatory approvals

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 01 07•January•2021