Victory defeats Canning JVWednesday, 11 November 2015 Haydn...

Victory defeats Canning JVWednesday, 11 November 2015


Haydn Black


BURU Energy and its partners in the Canning Basin have been forced to admit the Victory-1 well is indefatigable, and having resisted all attempts at testing it will be plugged and abandoned as another Canning conundrum.





While the well had shown potential cavernous or vugular porosity below 1945m, the combination of poor log quality, deep fresh water invasion and poor hole conditions meant the partners have been unable to determine the presence of any hydrocarbons in the Ungani trend structure.




Logs were limited to the area above 2030m principally due to a well-developed shale section below the zone of lost circulation.




The well also threw up casing issues.




Having considered the issues the EP 457 partners – Buru, Mitsubishi and Rey – have decided that the best course of action is to abandoned the well and, together with ongoing 2D seismic over the Victory structure, take some time to assess the data and consider drilling another well to test Victory next dry season.




Likewise, the Senagi-1 well in the adjacent EP 458 has been successfully abandoned after 286m of core has been cut, which should help better define locations with vugular dolomite reservoir section along the Ungani trend.




Because of delays at Senagi-1, and the risks inherent in the impending wet season, the partners have decided to delay the drilling of Ophir-1 until next year.




The DDH1 Rig-31 will be demobilised, while the Atlas Rig-2 will head from Victory to the Ungani area to drill the Ungani Far West-1 well.




The location is close to the Ungani access road and is not expected to be unduly affected by the wet season.




In Buru’s controversial Laurel Formation tight gas pilot program with Mitsubishi, all zones in the Valhalla North-1 and Asgard-1 wells have been completed with test tubing, and all are flowing stimulation water and gas.




It will be several weeks before the frac water is unloaded and Buru will be able to assess the liquids content from the promising Laurel Formation.




Asides from the testing, seismic surveys are now the primary focus.




The 200sq.km Yakka Munga 3D seismic survey was recently completed by Terrex seismic on time and on budget, and the data quality appears to be excellent, Buru said this morning.




The crew is now completing a 2D survey over the Raphael and the Victory location.




The joint venture has also agreed to undertake the 200sq.km Kurrajong 3D seismic survey over the Ungani – Praslin trend extension and line clearing for that survey is underway.




This survey is expected to confirm a number of additional prospects evident on existing 2D seismic along the Ungani trend.




The results will be available early in 2016 and will allow definition of the potential drilling targets along the Ungani trend for the 2016 dry season.




“We are obviously disappointed we have been unable to test the Victory well given the very encouraging results to date, however, we have also identified a new play type with the deeper shale section that sets up a regional exploration play,” Buru executive chairman Eric Streitberg said.




“With the additional seismic we hope to be able to better understand the results of the wells and follow up on these very encouraging results.”




The Ungani field continues to produce at a constrained 800bopd.




Buru shares were down 1.7% in early trade to $0.27.5 and Rey shares were flat at $0.06.