Buru Energy Ltd (ASX:BRU)’s next lifting of oil from the Ungani Oilfield joint venture is underway and the timing could not be much better with very strong Brent oil prices.
The lifting began yesterday from the storage facility at Wyndham port by the MT SCF Pechora and is expected to be in excess of 70,000 barrels.
Buru’s share of this is 50% and the lifting is scheduled by be completed today.
Producing at stable rate
It comes as Ungani, which is onshore in the Canning Basin of northwest Western Australia, continues to produce at a stable rate of some 800 barrels of oil per day.
Buru’s executive chairman Eric Streitberg said: "The current oil lifting will take advantage of the very strong Brent oil price.”
Rafael 1 progress
Drilling of the Rafael 1 well is proceeding consistently with no significant rig related downtime although the rate of penetration has been slow due to hard formations.
This well has been drilled ahead in 12¼ inch (311 mm) hole to the current depth of some 3,300 metres.
The current plan is to continue drilling to the 9⅝ inch (244 mm) casing setting depth above the interpreted reservoir section, which will then be drilled in 8½ inch (216 mm) hole after the 9⅝ inch casing has been set.
Rafael 1 is in Exploration Permit EP428 and is some 50 kilometres to the east of the Ungani Oilfield.
“Going well” operationally
“Drilling at Rafael is progressing slowly, but operationally it’s going well and we are very much looking forward to seeing some results when we get to the interpreted reservoir section," Streitberg said.
He also said that the high Brent prices were also a real positive for the Ungani 8 well which was currently planned to spud after the completion of Rafael 1.
The company is nearing completion of its 2021 seismic program with no significant incidents to date and good data quality being observed from the field data.
Currajong 1 test program
A test program at the Currajong 1 well, which was drilled before Rafael 1, has not produced the expected results.
The testing by swabbing of all four of the porous zones interpreted from wireline logs has been completed and good reservoir quality has been confirmed in all zones.
However, no oil has been recovered from the tested zones and pressure data acquired during the swabbing operations indicates that the zones are water bearing.
The well will now be suspended while the data are examined and the wireline log indications correlated with the test results.
Streitberg said: “We are obviously disappointed that we didn’t get an oil flow from Currajong despite the good quality dolomite reservoir confirmed by swabbing in the well that has confirmed a further westward extension of the Ungani style dolomite reservoir conventional oil play.
“We will now review the data from the well and will also review what effect this result has on the other prospects in the area.
“The review will also include the local and regional significance of the hydrogen zone encountered in the well.”