Diamond Drilling’s Ocean Apex semisubmersible drilling rig has been contracted by acting operator BP Developments Australia Pty Ltd (BP) on behalf of Cue Exploration Pty Ltd (Cue) for the drilling of the Ironbark prospect in exploration permit WA-359-P, offshore of Western Australia. In late October 2018, Cue, BP, Beach Energy and New Zealand Oil & Gas announced a co-ordination agreement which outlines BP to act as operator on behalf of Cue in planning the Ironbark-1 well prior to title transfers and creation of a formal joint venture. The Ironbark prospect is a Mungaroo Formation prospect which is e... more

Queensland’s first ‘domestic-only’ gas supply has moved a step closer today, thanks to the State Government awarding a licence to start construction on a gas processing plant near Wandoan on the Western Downs. Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham explained the State Government has issued a petroleum facility licence allowing energy and infrastructure company, Jemena, to build a plant to process gas from Senex Energy’s Project Atlas in the Surat Basin. The plant forms a part of Jemena’s $140 million Atlas Gas Pipeline Project, which is anticipated to generate 150 jobs and connect Project Atlas to the ... more

Wood and KBR have secured a multimillion-dollar contract to deliver integrated front-end engineering design (FEED) for Shell Australia's Crux Project. The contract is to build a not normally manned (NNM) platform and gas export pipeline, which will be positioned approximately 600 kilometres north of Broome, offshore of Western Australia. The Crux facilities will be an important source of backfill gas supply to the Shell-operated Prelude floating liquefied natural gas facility. The remotely operated, minimum facilities NNM platform concept for Crux will dry the gas and export the gas/condensate to Prelu... more

Santos Limited has announced first oil from the Van Gogh infill project, marking the successful completion of the two-well program which aims to increase production from the field. Located in the Exmouth Basin, offshore of Western Australia, the Van Gogh field is one of three subsea oil field developments which tie into a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO), the Ningaloo Vision. The infill project commenced in September 2018 and involved drilling and completing two subsea wells and connecting them to existing offshore infrastructure. Santos Managing Director and Chief Executive Off... more

Italian multinational oil and gas company, Eni, and Oman Oil Company Exploration and Production (OOCEP) have entered into an Exploration and Production Sharing Agreement (EPSA) for Block 47 with the Government of the Sultanate of Oman. Block 47 was awarded to Eni and OOCEP following their joint bid in the 2017 Oman Licensing Round. The onshore block is located in the Omani A’Dakhiliyah Governorate and spans approximately 8,524 square kilometres. Eni is the Operator of the block and holds a 90 per cent participating interest, while OOCEP holds the remaining 10 per cent participating interest in the blo... more

BP has just green-lit a major expansion at the Atlantis field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, in addition to announcing ‘significant’ new oil resources that have the potential to create further development opportunities in the region.  The $1.3 billion Atlantis Phase 3 development will include the construction of a new subsea production system from eight new wells that will be tied to BP’s current U.S Gulf of Mexico platform (241 kilometres south of New Orleans). Scheduled to come on stream in 2020, the project is expected to boost production at the platform by an estimated 38,000 barrels of oil equival... more

Rose Petroleum plc has provided an update on operations from the Gunnison Valley Unit (GVU) in Utah’s Paradox Basin. The U.S. company has announced that the fracture characterisation study undertaken by oilfield services company Schlumberger has now been completed. In the analysis of the proposed well GVU22-1, the models of the combined fracture sets developed in the study indicate that the well is ideally situated to capture the fold and fault-related fractures. The study also shows that both fault and fold related fracture sets are viable from the geomechanical modelling. The results further ind... more

International oil and gas company, Calima Energy Limited has officially ‘spudded’ the first well of a three well programme to test the prospectivity of the Montney Formation in the company’s 72,000-acre British Columbia lease holding. The company expects the Calima-1 vertical well to be drilled to a total depth of 1,860 metres, with core data set to be collected over a substantial section of the Montney interval, followed by the acquisition of a full suite of wireline logs. Calima plans to use wireline data to confirm the depth of the two horizontal wells (which will be drilled immediately after comp... more