A farm-in agreement by an Australian oil and gas company to OMV's offshore Toutouwai discovery in New Zealand is still on course, while an appraisal well is being assessed for drilling in early 2023.
The potential Australian farm-in company, BPH Energy’s investee company Advent Energy, said today it has the right to acquire a 30% interest in three offshore exploration blocks in the Taranaki basin — PEPs 57075, 60092 and 60093 — from the operator OMV.
BPH said there are several conditions in the farm-out agreement that expired on 24 June 2022, but no action will be taken by either Advent or OMV "given both parties intent to proceed" with the agreement pending the New Zealand government's ongoing processes.
The current owners of the three permits are OMV on 70% and Sapura Energy on 30%.
Since drilling the Toutouwai-1 well in April 2020 in PEP 60093 the focus of the joint venture has been on assessing the results of the discovery while maturing the prospectivity across the permits.
Toutouwai-1 intersected shallow marine and lower coastal plain sandstone reservoir objectives between 3700 and 4296 metres, with a total net pay range of between 45 and 52 metres.
Due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic at that time, there is no core, wireline or other data available.
Toutouwai-1 was successfully plugged and abandoned as a play-opening technical discovery without achieving its success case exploration objectives, said Advent, which added the result is encouraging from a prospectivity perspective in that it proved the presence of an active working petroleum system and de-risked similar prospective structures in PEPs 60093 and 60092.
The Toutouwai-2 appraisal well is being assessed for drilling early in 2023, said Advent. OMV has the harsh environment jack-up drilling rig Valaris 249 on contract in New Zealand until March 2023.
David Breeze, Advent's executive director, said: “Advent is excited to work with a company that has the global presence and technical calibre of OMV."
“Advent is also delighted to have been selected to join with OMV NZ and SapuraOMV and views this opportunity as an extremely positive investment in a proven basin which provides the opportunity for: near-term appraisal drilling, development and monetisation; a diverse multi-play portfolio across the entire acreage position and; reasonably limited cost exposure with significant further exploration potential."
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