Australian independent Emperor Energy is looking to progress towards the front-end engineering and design phase for its Judith gas field development offshore Victoria after bringing on board a farm-in partner to share the risk and cost of a new well.
The operator’s growing enthusiasm for the grassroots Judith project comes thanks to recently acquired seismic data licensed from French geophysical services player CGG.
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The APA Group is performing pre-front engineering and design work for Judith based on four initial wells with a fifth to follow producing a total of 80 million cubic feet per day of gas over 25 years.
The pre-FEED study covers a gas processing plant to operate adjacent to, and in parallel with, APA’s existing onshore Orbost gas plant as well as an approximate 40-kilometre subsea pipeline to transport gas from Judith to the new plant. It also involves an export pipeline to the Eastern Gas Pipeline to the north of the Orbost plant.
An independent resource assessment earlier put Judith’s 2C contingent resources at 150 billion cubic feet of gas and the P50 unrisked prospective gas resource at 1.226 trillion cubic feet.
The new data acquired from CGG provide a major improvement in definition of seismic imagery with the potential to significantly de-risk the Greater Judith Structure for appraisal and exploration drilling, noted Emperor.
The operator’s consulting geologists and geophysicists, who are interpreting and analysing the new data, have observed the amplitude response is shown to extend up-dip from the Judith-1 well into the Greater Judith structure.
Detailed interpretation and analysis of the new seismic data covering the Judith gas field and Greater Judith structure will continue throughout April.
Farm-out
By mid-May, Emperor reckons it will have a clearer picture of hydrocarbon indicators across the Judith field and the Sydney-based company considers this will greatly enhance its prospects of landing a partner to participate in the drilling of the Judith-2 well.
Emperor also believes it will provide it with the confidence needed to progress early-stage government approval work as part of the overall Judith feasibility study.
Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Titles Authority (NOPTA) last December approved an extension of the timeline to drill the Judith-2 exploration well to August 2023 from February this year.
CGG last year acquired the Judith seismic as part of a multi-client 3D Survey that covered much of the Offshore Gippsland Basin.
Emperor has already received the preliminary processed data, which includes a MAZ merge with CGG’s previous legacy reprocessed data, with final processed data expected to be delivered later in 2021.
Some further improvement in data quality is expected in the final processed data volume.
The operator said that seismic sections across the Judith gas field indicate that high amplitude/low impedance responses are well developed in the sections correlating with the Judith gas sands intersected in Shell’s 1989 Judith-1 wildcat, and also in the interpreted underlying Longtom reservoirs.
“The proximity of the Judith gas field to the Rosedale fault in the north had previously affected seismic data quality as you get closer to the fault resulting in poor seismic response as you progress up-dip from the Judith-1 gas discovery,” said Emperor director Phil McNamara.
“The new multi-client 3D seismic data volume, including MAZ merge with earlier CGG legacy reprocessing, provides a major improvement in seismic definition and continuity and to a large extent overcomes this problem.”
Initial examination of the new seismic also shows the presence of high amplitude responses indicative of the possible presence of gas in interpreted Kipper gas sands extending from ExxonMobil’s producing Kipper gas field into the south-eastern corner of Emperor’s Block Vic/P47.
The possible extension of the Kipper field into Vic/P47 will be assessed by future work.
CGG’s survey data cover 37 square kilometres over and around the Judith field with exploration permit Vic/P47 offshore Victoria and further areas outside the block to the west, east and south that are required to fully define the Greater Judith structure.
Emperor currently has a 100%-operated interest in the Vic/P47 permit.