Wildcat well drilled for North Canterbury oil Marta Steeman - Canterbury | Friday, 16 May 2008
There's no gusher at the Kate-1 well near Amberley in North Canterbury. That is the stuff of movies. Old hand Ron Richards will not be letting that happen anyway.
"I drill these holes to keep everything in the ground. It only comes when I want it to come. As far it bursting out of the ground, then I've made a big mistake there."
Richards is the drilling consultant hired by Green Gate to direct the drilling of the wildcat well in the Kate Valley, several kilometres north of Amberley.
Wildcat is the jargon for the first well in the area.
Richards fits the image of a weather-beaten oil man and enjoys playing the cliche right down to his ten-gallon style hard hat. His career in the industry spans 40 years, much of that on oil rigs offshore. He has worked on the Amazon, Peru, Indonesia, Borneo, Thailand, Vietnam, South America and India for 22 years.
The rig, standing about 45m high, looks pretty impressive tucked between the hills in North Canterbury
"It's a baby," Richards says, although it could go down to 3000m.
North Canterbury is nearly virgin territory. There have only been two wells, before Kate 1, drilled in North Canterbury, according to specialist Mac Beggs of Geosphere, a Wellington consultancy advising Green Gate.
One of those was at the Kowai River in 1978, drilled by state company Offshore Mining Ltd, which was later called Petrocorp and that well went to 1419m. And then in 2000, Arcadia-1 was drilled at Cust, near Rangiora.
Kate-1 has reached its target depth of 1100m after 6 days of drilling.
So how has it gone?
"I can't tell you. That's all confidential," Richards wheezes, between puffs.
These oil men play their cards close to their chest.
There is a good bit of Kiwi ingenuity about the rig. It was designed and built by NRG in Hamilton, another business owned by Stacey Radford, the owner of Green Gate, the Nelson company drilling the well with Australian partner, a small explorer Gas To Grid. The rig has been purpose built for New Zealand roads. Usually rigs were imported from the US.
"This rig has no over-wide loads. We can shift it at any time," Richard says.
Electronic wire line logs will be dropped down the well which will give information about the geological structure. That should take another day.
Green Gate shot 2-D seismic over the permit area which extends offshore. Depending on what the logging shows, they will either plug and abandon the well or put it into production.
Kim Styles, the geologist from Geosphere analysing samples of rock coming out of the hole, says gas pretty much always comes with oil. It was just the amount that varied.
If Richards is hard boiled, Styles is the epitome of fresh faced.
"Kim was lucky enough to find a dinosaur's tooth today," Richards says.
"No, he was taking the p... out of me," Styles replies. Richards broke his tooth on a lolly and stuck it in a rock sample.
"I thought I'd just see how good this geologist is, see if he can age it," Richards wheezes.
"I thought it was 65 million years but apparently it was only 63 million," Styles says.
If there was an oil find, the oil would be tankered out of the valley to Lyttelton, Richards says. If it was really big, it would be piped to Lyttelton.
Stacey Radford, Green Gate's owner, is a retired beef and sheep farmer. The exploration well is only the start, he says. If it turned out to be a producer you would drill another four or five wells.
The seismic had given them "some pretty good indications", Radford says.
Richards' walkie talkie crackles and a voice booms from it.
"Hey, Ron. This well is turning to s...".
"I don't think you were supposed to hear that," Radford smiles.
Half a dozen employees on the rig are pumping mud down to the bottom of the hole and when it resurfaces they are running it over the shakers. It is getting muddy.
Drilling a well is not cheap. According to information posted by Gas To Grid, it is shelling out about $A1.2m to fund Kate 1. By drilling Kate, Green Gate has fulfilled permit conditions set by Crown Minerals.
A shareholder in Green Gate is Wellington's Widespread Energy whose spokesman Chris Castle is a lot more bullish than Radford cares to be.
Castle said there could be 25 million barrels in the area - half a Tui oilfield. An oil seep was uncovered during geotechnical works on the flank of the anticline in 2003 and solid and gas surveys had confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons.
But Radford is cautious. "I don't talk numbers," he says.
It is the first well the company has drilled to get a better understanding of the geological structure which extends out to sea. It is cheaper drilling on land and if it reveals hydrocarbons it would make offshore drilling more attractive. An offshore well could cost in the order of $US20m.
(20min delay)