Santos Declares Positive Results Exeter Oil Field

The oil and gas group Santos Ltd today said that it had received encouraging drill results at its jointly owned Exeter oil field in the Carnarvon Basin, offshore of Western Australia. The Exeter-2 well, about two kilometres north of the Exeter-1 oil discovery, has confirmed the presence of an oil field. Santos said this provided further encouragement for a potential oil development in the Exeter-Mutineer area. Combined reserve potential for the Exeter and Mutineer fields is between fifty and a hundred and thirty million barrels.

Drilling at Exeter-2 intersected the top reservoir approximately forty metres deeper than at Exeter-1 and encountered nine metres of net oil pay between 3150 to 3162 metres in good quality sandstones. Woodside Petroleum's jointly owned Wanaea, Cossack and Lambert oil fields, located a short distance south east of Exeter, are highly productive from the same age Angel Formation reservoirs. “The Exeter-2 result is certainly very encouraging,” Santos managing director John Ellice-Flint said. He said that the success reflected the strong commitment by Santos and its joint venture partners to fast track the appraisal of the initial Exeter discovery and realise the potential of the WA-191-P permit.

Santos with forty four and a half percent is operator of the permit site and Kufpec Australia Pty Ltd holds the same stake, with the balance going to Woodside Petroleum. The Exeter field is located in 147 meters of water, about a hundred and fifty kilometres north of Dampier, off the Western Australian coast. Mr Ellice-Flint said that further appraisal of both Exeter and Mutineer is required to optimise the development plan for the area, but a combined development of the two fields was now “a likely scenario”. Two further wells, one each on Mutineer and Exeter, are currently being considered for drilling as soon as possible in order to better define the volumes. At 1115 AEDT shares in Santos had gained four cents to $6.30, but Woodside had lost three cents to $14.27.

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