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Contact’s three additional Ahuroa storage wells near completion
13 March 2010 - Three additional wells for Contact Energy’s Ahuroa gas storage project are nearly completed drilling, the company says.
Sources: Contact Energy, Origin Energy and Lindsay Clark
Stage two of the Ahuroa development involves the drilling of three additional gas injection/production wells which began last October.
Origin Energy, which is carrying out the project for Contact, said the first of these wells Ahuroa-3 was successfully drilled, completed and tested. Gas flow rates from Ahuroa-3 were recorded at up to 19 mmscfd on test.
Ahuroa-3 was expected to be connected to the process facilities by the first quarter 2010 and injection will commence then. Ahuroa 4, the next well in the drilling programme, spudded on 30 December 2009.
Contact said that in total, six petajoules of natural gas have been injected into the reservoir. Since the commissioning a new compressor in October 2009, gas has been consistently injected into the storage reservoir at the target rate of around 40 terajoules per day.
The installation of the gas extraction and processing equipment will begin in March and is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2010 when the project is scheduled to be commissioned. At that point Contact expects to be able to extract gas at around 45 terajoules per day.
Contact’s other associated project in Taranaki, the $250 million, 200 megawatt gas-fired peaking power station at Stratford is approaching the commissioning stage and is on track to be in commercial operation in winter 2010, the company said.
The fast-start plant will support greater volumes of weather dependent renewables in the electricity system and contribute to the country’s security of supply.
