Jadestone laying the groundwork for drilling ops offshore Australia

AIM-listed and Singapore-headquartered oil and gas player Jadestone Energy has handed out an environment plan (EP) for drilling activities in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has confirmed that Jadestone submitted an environment plan for drilling operations within Commonwealth waters of the Timor Sea, off northern Western Australia between 2024 and 2025.

Based on the EP, the company intends to re-enter and sidetrack the existing Skua-11 well in production license AC/L8. This is a subsea oil producer well located in the Skua field approximately 706 km or 376 nautical miles east of Darwin in a water depth of around 80 m.

According to Jadestone, the Skua-11 ST1 well activities are planned to begin between Q4 of 2024 and Q2 of 2025, subject to mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) availability, regulator acceptance, and long lead equipment arrival.

While the drilling operations will likely last for about 72 days, the firm underlines that timings are subject to weather and operational efficiency. Skua-11 well forms part of the Montara development, where crude oil from the Montara, Skua, Swift, and Swallow fields is transported via flowline for processing at the well head platform (WHP) and the FPSO Montara Venture.

The WHP currently has five production wells and five subsea production wells are located approximately 17 to 18 km from the FPSO. Jadestone has been actively working on expanding its portfolio.

To this end, the company completed in February 2024 the acquisition of an additional interest in a Woodside Energy-operated project, encompassing oil-producing fields off the coast of Western Australia.

Since resuming production on September 2, 2023, the AIM-listed player’s Montara project benefitted from active management of the Montara H2, H3, and H4 wells to optimize the oil-to-gas ratio.