That's an epic gas flare @Mikey74 everyone should take a peak at...

That's an epic gas flare @Mikey74 everyone should take a peak at that clip of video

It was very pleasing and more than comforting to see some of MIN's references and comments regarding the significant LD gas discovery. MIN, and by virtue NWE, have some bold, aggressive plans to get another 2 + 2 wells drilled in FY23 and FY24, a gas plant built (base case 250TJ/d plant, maybe even a 375TJ/d plant) and resulting in gas sales being booked by FY24. Aggressive? Yes... Achievable? Absolutely. I think the market liked this news from MIN today and appropriately bid NWE up into the green on some strong volumes... an even more pronounced result as it was a sea of red across the board.

The other significant news today, IMO, was our good neighbours south of LD announcing that WE-3 flowed very strong indeed. But specifically it was this comment that really grabbed my attention:

"Once the test was completed the well was shut in for a pressure build up. After only 3-hours the WE3 well head pressure had already returned to near virgin reservoir pressure which is indicative of both the quality of the reservoir and the presence of a substantial connected gas volume beyond the well bore."

What does this mean? Well, we had thought that since WE-3 was in the heavily faulted, possibly compartmentalised block which they called the Northern Block, it was thought to be a separate accumulation from the WE Central Block. It would appear in fact it is all one large connected reservoir and given what we know about the top Kingia depth structure, quite possibly this means the WE structure is connected to our NWE/MIN Lead E. See below image which most will recall, take note of WE-3 and the theory that the gas is "filled to spill", that is it flows from WE into Lead E and beyond... seems like the theory may no longer be a theory. Seems like Lead E now has a higher COS of being gas charged and not a dry hole. FWIW hoping the JV decide to sink an exploration well in Lead E in the next campaign.



But even better, and to put some figures around what this could mean for us, I refer to some excellent work by @OldGeo which I revisited and dug out (attached below) as a gentle reminder. If Lead E is in fact an area of 65km2 (per NWE's August 18, 2021 announcement re EP368 & EP426 Permian Prospectivity Update) and you plug 65km2 into the volumetric calculation for Lead E as present by oldgeo then the estimate is 311 BCF NWE share. That could bring NWE's share of potential recoverable gas to just under 1TCF when LD is taken into consideration. Very impressive indeed.

This is just my take and I could be wrong so would be interested in others views.

But perhaps the market has joined the dots here... and I think our soon to be released Ringneck seismic will help connect some more dots... interesting times for NWE.

GLTA