Empire Energy records successful results in drilling at Beetaloo Basin

Empire Energy has reported a significant milestone in its bid to detect gas at one of the Territory’s most promising resources. Find out where.

Beetaloo Basin aspirant Empire Energy has claimed the lead in the battle to develop the potentially lucrative gas reserve.

Empire last week reported a significant milestone with a successful dig at its Carpentaria-3H reserve.

A highlight of the results from the C-3H test was a record drill of 4460m that the company says was completed on time and under budget.

Empire Energy managing director Alex Underwood said the drill was conducted with no environmental incidents and pointed potentially towards “very large volumes” of extractable gas.

Empire Energy managing director Alex Underwood with local contractor Les Rice at the company's Carpentaria-2H onshore gas well drill site in the NT.

The drill’s total horizontal section length was 2632m, of which 2374m was placed successfully within the Velkerri-B shale formation “ with strong gas shows throughout the target shale zone”.

The previous longest horizontal well in the basin, Amungee-1 was drilled by Origin with a 1876m horizontal section

A statement lodged with the Australian Stock Exchange said it was “by far” the longest horizontal section drilled in the Beetaloo to date.

The anticipated cost of the C-3H drill was less than $11m and compares favourably to Carpentaria-2H and is a small fraction of the cost of drilling deeper Beetaloo wells.

Empire reports suggest fracture stimulation operations and production testing of C-3H is scheduled to commence in early December.

Empire Energy managing director Alex Underwood and Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for Mining and Industry Nicole Manison at Carpentaria-2H.

The fracture stimulation design will be informed from Empire’s recent C-2H fracture stimulation and flow testing program that the company says will enhance well productivity and flow rates.

The company said market conditions were driving gas exploration and production.

“Incredibly tight Australian gas market conditions are driving significant commercial interest from potential customers for Empire’s low CO2 gas, which is likely to facilitate the company’s rapid commercialisation strategy,” Empire stated.

Mr Underwood said Empire continued to lead development at Beetaloo.

“The successful drilling of Carpentaria-3H, on time and below budget, and without any recordable health and safety or environmental incidents, demonstrates that the Empire

team continues to lead the development of the Beetaloo Basin,” he said.

“The final cost of drilling and casing this well is likely to be lower than the cost of Empire’s first horizontal well, Carpentaria-2H, despite having double the length of horizontal section

within the target Velkerri-B shale section, and lower than the cost of Empire’s first

vertical well, Carpentaria-1.

“This clearly demonstrates the rapid learning curve we are progressing along, and further enhances the team’s confidence that we may be able to commercially extract very large volumes of gas from EP187.

Part of the Carpentaria-2H test site in July 2002.

Mr Underwood said the company’s technical team were analysing data from the recent successful C-2H flow test, which was guiding the company in its handling of C-3H test results.

“We will soon re-enter Carpentaria-2H to run a Production Logging Tool (PLT) which will give us highly granular data about the relative contribution to flow rates from each fracture stimulation stage and each cluster within those stages in the Carpentaria-2H horizontal well section.

“We anticipate that our data-driven process of fracture stimulation and perforation design optimisation, utilising industry best practice technology and expertise, will drive

continuous productivity improvements.

“In the success case, this may result in Empire’s Beetaloo Basin gas being one of the lowest cost sources of large-scale gas supply into Australia’s critically short east coast gas market and ultimately into the Asian LNG market, which will require responsibly sourced gas supply for many decades to support the energy transition.”