Beach Energy says the first two wells of its offshore Otway Basin campaign—Geographe 4 and 5—have been connected to the Otway Gas Plant and are now delivering gas into the east coast market following the completion of the commissioning phase.
The new Geographe wells effectively double the Otway Gas Plant production capacity, which now has the well capacity to deliver approximately 180TJ per day. Actual production rates will depend on customer nominations, which vary on a seasonal and daily basis.
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The company said connecting the remainder of the wells from the offshore campaign and connecting the nearshore Enterprise discovery was required to attain plant nameplate production capacity of 205TJ/d.
Beach Energy acting CEO Morné Engelbrecht said the connection of the Geographe wells was an important step towards delivering on Beach’s growth targets at a time when the east coast gas market was potentially facing shortfalls as early as 2023.
“Achieving first gas from these Geographe wells is an important milestone for Beach as it represents the first gas from our first ever offshore drilling campaign,” Engelbrecht said.
“This represents one of the first key building blocks towards our production growth target of 28MMboe in FY24.
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“We know that the east coast market needs this supply of natural gas and this is why Beach is continuing its development campaign in the Otway Basin, and we are focused on delivering that program.”
Drilling and testing of Thylacine North 1 well—the third well in the six-well development campaign—was also recently completed with the rig preparing to move to the Thylacine West 1 well location which will be followed by two more Thylacine development wells.
