AWE Ups Australian Field's Estimate
Australia-listed AWE says a reserves estimate for the Waitsia gas field in Western Australia, regarded as Australia's largest onshore conventional gas find in the last 40 years, is much higher than expected.
The evaluation by reservoir auditor RISC concluded 2P reserves of 811 petajoules (21.66bn m3) for Waitsia were 78% higher than AWE’s previous estimate as on June 30, 2017, said AWE November 14.
“The RISC work is consistent with AWE’s current internal view of Waitsia reserves, which will be finalised when the current flow test program and subsequent analysis and evaluation work are complete. AWE anticipates issuing a further update before the end of 2017,” the company said. Waitsia has the capability to supply about 10% of Western Australia's domestic market needs.
“The Waitsia Stage 2 development project is planned to deliver 100 TJ/d [2.67mn m3/d] for at least ten years. The additional reserves identified by this review are more than double the reserves required for this project and provide opportunities for significantly increased near term field production and longer field life,” AWE’s CEO David Biggs, said.
According to AWE, since RISC’s August 2016 estimate, there have been a number of material changes which have resulted in the increase to the reserve estimates. The Waitsia-3 and Waitsia-4 wells were drilled and encountered substantially thicker sections of high quality Kingia reservoir than previously observed. The Waitsia-3 and Waitsia-4 well results enabled a transfer of contingent resources in the Kingia reservoir to the reserves classification. The 3D seismic data volume has been reprocessed and re-depth converted using the new well data. The observed thicker Kingia reservoir and refined depth conversion also resulted in the estimation of greater thickness, rock volume and improved reservoir properties, resulting in a significant increase to the gas initially in-place and recoverable reserves.
AWE is the operator and has 50% interest while Origin Energy (via Lattice Energy) has the remaining 50% interest.
Shardul Sharma