Dex,
They definitely knew about the swelling clays because they had to drill through them to get to the coal during the exploration phase.
Lateritized basalts often consist of interlayered basalts and sticky, swelling clays. Any sort of casing failure in that area and you're likely to lose the hole.
Despite the talk in the ann about seeing if they can be salvaged I suspect these wells will be write-offs. Probably the only way to save them would be to clean them out and run another layer of casing down inside them (of smaller diameter) which of course changes your hole size and is no guarantee against it happening again.
Live and learn. Linc seem to have solved their casing problems so no doubt Cougar will too.
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