Santos' Dorado-2 Confirms Oil, Gas Resources

Australian Santos announced June 6 that the Dorado-2 appraisal well has confirmed oil and gas resources in the Bedout Basin, offshore Western Australia.

Dorado-2 is located in petroleum permit WA-437-P (Santos 80% and operator, Carnarvon Petroleum 20%). It is in waters some 160 km north of Port Hedland and 2 km away from the Dorado-1 discovery, made in July last year.

"This is a great result which indicates the Dorado discovery is larger than anticipated and which significantly de-risks a future development," Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said. "The value of the discovery is greatly enhanced by the high quality reservoirs and fluids and the shallow-water setting, which should facilitate a cost-competitive development.”

Gallagher added that acquisition of a major new seismic survey, the Keraudren 3D survey, is in progress to mature additional exploration opportunities for drilling along this significant hydrocarbon resource play.

Dorado-2 was drilled using the jack-up mobile offshore drilling unit, Noble Tom Prosser in a water depth of 91 metres and reached a total depth of 4,573 metres. Once wireline logging operations are completed, the well will be plugged and abandoned as planned, and the rig will move to the Roc South-1 exploration well before returning to drill Dorado-3, Santos said.