Strike Energy is entering the home straight with its potentially ground breaking “Jaws-1” gas well in South Australia.
The company has mobilised a convoy of Halliburton trucks to begin the highly anticipated hydraulic stimulation program at the innovative project.
In a recent market update, Strike reported that the Halliburton stimulation crew was on its way to Jaws-1 in the Southern Cooper Basin Project, about 100km south of the Moomba gas processing plant.
This follows a significant de-risking of the project earlier this month with the successful drilling of the horizontal well and the installation of a wellbore liner and packers for a seven-stage hydraulic fracturing program.
The well is a significant achievement in its own right, drilling horizontally for some 800 metres just 2m below a coal seam at a depth of more than 2000 metres. At the end of the horizontal section, Jaws-1 threaded its way through an existing vertical wellbore, which will help produce gas from the deeply buried coal seam.
Strike is targeting coal seam gas from far below generally accepted depths but has done the technical work to show that successful fracture stimulation of Jaws-1 should release huge volumes of gas.
If successful, Strike could have access to over 11 trillion cubic feet of gas, which would be enough to meet all of the domestic gas demand on the east coast for up to 20 years.
This would put Strike in the box seat in the east coast market, where gas prices have trebled in recent years and could go even higher because of rapidly depleting supplies from the Bass Strait and rising LNG exports from Gladstone.
Strike said Halliburton was bringing its own innovation to Jaws-1, including the use of their “Pinnacle” microseismic and tiltmeter equipment. This equipment will allow detailed measurement of fractures generated in the coal seam in real time.
The stimulation program will be followed immediately by flowback operations and the running of the final completion and connection of surface equipment, with wells possibly online in early to mid-July.
Strike has a 66.67% stake in the Southern Cooper Basin project, with Energy World Corporation holding the balance.
Strike is attempting to blaze a trail that has not previously been blazed at these depths in Australia before and the size of the prize is absolutely company making for the ASX listed junior if it can pull it off.
By Matt Birney
