ASX-listed Buru Energy is set to kick off a multi-well drilling campaign across its JV ground in Western Australia’s oil-rich Canning Basin around mid-June this year after tying up a suitable drill rig with the grunt to drill both the 3km deep exploration target at its Rafael oil prospect and go horizontally in a new Ungani oil field production well.
Off the back of its latest $2.5m oil sale and a successful farm-in from east coast energy giant, Origin Energy who will fund two of the three planned wells, the Perth-based oiler has its drilling team gathering the services and equipment it needs to support its activities.
Buru has inked a letter of intent and paid a mobilisation deposit for an Ensign 963 drill rig which is currently on location in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin where interestingly, Origin was chasing unconventional oil and gas.
Buru’s management says the sister rig to the Ensign 963 is currently in the North Perth Basin drilling 5,000m deep gas wells for strike Energy at its West Erregulla find.
Buru and Origin will be seeking as much as 97 million barrels of oil across the two prospects to be drilled. The highly anticipated deep Rafael-1 test well sits east of Ungani and a second target, Kurrajong, is west of Ungani and due south of Buru’s 100 per cent-owned Yulleroo gas-condensate field.
The reservoir target at Kurrajong is at about the same depth as the oil-filled Ungani Dolomite reservoir nearby, around 2,400m below surface, however Buru said Kurrajong could be more than twice the size of Ungani.
The company expects to have the rig on site at Kurrajong-1 in late May or early June.
At the Rafael-1 test well Buru will drill into a completely separate structure located to the east of Ungani, with a target depth of around 3,000m below surface. Rafael-1 will test around 69 million barrels of prospective oil resources, equivalent in volume to several Ungani oil fields.
Elsewhere, Buru and its 50 per cent Ungani oil field JV partner, Roc Oil, are planning a fresh oil production well, Ungani-8, as the third well in the current program with the Ensign 963 rig.
Ungani-8 will be drilled horizontally into a separate structural compartment of the field with the expectation of maintaining or improving the oil production rate from the field as the price of oil firms.
Buru Executive Chairman, Eric Streitberg said: “We are very pleased with the way the program is coming together in what will be a very big year for Buru in the Canning. We are drilling two of the largest onshore conventional oil prospects in Australia and success will be transformational for Buru, for the Kimberley, and for Western Australia.”
“Ensign 963 is a very capable rig and Ensign Energy is a very experienced and capable rig operator. Our drilling team has brought an outstanding level of professionalism to the program and we have received great support from the service companies.”
“It is a multi-faceted process to get ready to spud the first well, and we are on track and looking forward to starting work in the field and drilling some world class oil prospects.”
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By Matt Birney
