Strike gets hydrocarbon whiff in Perth Basin

ASX-listed oil and gas player Strike Energy has encountered the first sign of hydrocarbons at its multi-target West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin, Western Australia.

While the hydrocarbon shows in the tertiary Cattamarra oil target were deemed insufficient to warrant the running of wireline logging, the results still serve to support the company’s model of this particular target, which had been assigned a low 14% chance of success prior to drilling.

Management said the result would help calibrate the amplitude response to both hydrocarbons and good quality reservoir for future Cattamarra activities.

Drilling at West Erregulla-2 is now proceeding towards the secondary Basal Wagina conventional gas prospect that could host best estimate prospective gas resources of 247 billion cubic feet of gas, or “Bcf”.

The company will then continue drilling to a total depth of 5,200 metres to intersect the primary target Kingia-High Cliff target, which has a similar size and nature to the major Waitsia gas field located about 16km to the west.

Waitsia, which is operated by Japan’s Mitsui & Co, is one of the largest onshore conventional gas discoveries in Australia with just under 770 billion cubic feet of gas.

Strike has estimated that there is a 69% chance of success at Kingia-High Cliff, which could host 916Bcf of gas and a 12% chance of success at the Basal Wagina target.

West Erregulla-2 is located within EP469, which is held equally by Strike and Warrego Energy.

In the event of a successful gas discovery, Strike has a gas offtake agreement with major chemical manufacturer CSBP for the supply of between 80 petajoules to 100 petajoules of gas at a rate of up to 25 terajoules per day.