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Austral Pacific Plans to Bring Cheal Oil Field Onstream in Late 2006
1 May 2006 - Austral Pacific plans to bring Cheal oil field onstream in late 2006 with 2000 barrel a day capacity production station.
Austral Pacific Energy Ltd plans to bring its Cheal oil field in onshore Taranaki onstream in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Chief executive officer, Rick Webber, said in the company’s annual report for the 2005 year, that the Cheal partners planned a permanent production station with an oil handling capacity of 2000 barrels a day together with gas and oil export facilities.
The field development plan provided for the drilling of further development wells from the Cheal-A and Cheal-B sites.
Work would commence on the field development as soon as the approval of the joint venture participants has been secured.
An extended production testing programme at Cheal provided a high level of assurance of well production capabilities.
In addition, an independent reserves assessment at Cheal had enabled the company to book 539,000 barrels of proven reserves from the field.
Production of 31,000 barrels of oil from the Cheal field in the past year had provided $1.8 million revenue at an average sale price of $56.98 per barrel.
Meanwhile at the company’s Cardiff deep gas field, Austral Pacific says in the annual report, that production is now rising to over 3 million cubic feet a day with some 100 barrels a day of condensate.
This follows review of the thick gas-bearing section in the Cardiff-2A well and further well stimulation.
In a separate press release, Mr Webber said the arrival recently of additional equipment from the United States will allow the company to complete the final stage of production testing at Cardiff.
“I’m very optimistic about Cardiff,” said Mr Webber. “I believe there is a significant prize to be won here and getting a definitive test result and a declaration of commerciality over the discovery are key steps along the way.”
“From a strategic point of view, Cheal and Cardiff are fundamental to our goal of establishing and building a sustainable production profile,” he said.
Sources: Austral Pacific 2005 annual report and recent press release
