Jabiru 5a Economic Certainty

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday April 24, 1987

By ANDREW MAIN, Resources Writer

The Jabiru oilfield partners have just recorded a very encouraging success in step-out well Jabiru 5A, which has shown a 38-metre thick oil column good enough to make the well an economic certainty.

Jabiru 5A is part of the partners' plan to increase the field's daily output of 15,500 barrels of oil.

Jabiru 5 was a failure for technical reasons and 5A, which was drilled alongside, now looks set to increase the field's flow by as much as half.

At the moment all of the field's production comes from Jabiru 1A, drilled in 1983, 1.65 kilometres north-east of the new well.

The first well had a slightly bigger oil column, around 55-metres thick, so the new well is likely to be a scale model of 1A.

It will be connected to the 1A site by a subsea completion which operator BHP says will be in production by August 1.

The two will then be pumped up to the converted tanker Jabiru Venture on the surface at a rate expected to shorten significantly the five to six-week waiting times between cargo offtakes.

Jabiru oil, unlike any other Australian-produced oil, is all sold on the open market and goes mostly to South-East Asia.

It came on stream at around 13,000 barrels a day in August.

The new well's output will be almost pure profit for partners in production licence AC/L1, about 700 kilometres west of Darwin.

They are BHP Petroleum with 50 per cent, Citco Australia Petroleum (an Esso subsidiary) 18.75 per cent, Norcen International Ltd 12.5 per cent, Peko Oil Ltd 10.31 per cent, Ampol Exploration Ltd 6.25 per cent and Norpac Securities Ltd and Brenda Mines Ltd both on 1.093 per cent.

© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald

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