Australian oil and gas company Quadrant Energy has begun drilling the Dorado-1 well offshore W. Australia.
The Dorado-1 well is located in WA-437-P exploration permit where Quadrant is the operator with an 80% interest and Carnarvon Petroleum is its partner with the remaining 20% interest.
Carnarvon said on Tuesday that the Ensco 107 jack-up drilling rig completed the ready-to-operate process, drilled the 36″ conductor hole, cemented the 30″ surface casing, and was preparing to drill the 17-1/2″ section.
The rig will drill the 17-1/2″ hole to the planned section depth of approximately 1,175 meters measured depth followed by setting the 13-3/8″ casing.
The company added that the primary objective for the Dorado-1 well was to assess the gas and liquids potential in the Caley Member with the well being less than 20 kilometers from and updip of the successful Roc-1 and Roc-2 wells.
The Dorado structure at the Caley interval is estimated to contain a gross mean recoverable prospective resource of 545 Bscf of gas and 30 million barrels of associated condensate (being 125 million barrels of oil equivalent, gross Pmean).
Multiple secondary targets have been identified in the Crispin and Milne Members and these will also be assessed by the Dorado-1 exploration well.
It is worth reminding that Carnarvon said in late May that the rig was situated near the Dorado-1 drilling location and was waiting for swell conditions to subside to enable it to move onto the drilling location.
The contract for the Ensco 107 jack-up drilling rig was awarded in November 2017 . The rig mobilized from Singapore to drill Quadrant’s well at the end of April 2018 with plans to reach the well location in mid-May 2018 and start drilling before the end of the month.