APA Group has commenced pre-front end engineering design (pre-FEED) for Emperor Energy’s Judith gas field in the Gippsland Basin offshore Victoria.
The pre-FEED work is for the provision of midstream infrastructure and services related to gas that is planned to be produced from the gas field following appraisal drilling.
APA will carry out the work, which is expected to take four months to complete, using a balanced combination of both in house and external expertise.
The decision basis for the pre-FEED is 90 terajoules (TJ/day) of sales gas across a 25-year project life, with gas processing to meet the gas sales specification.
Emperor and APA established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) relating to the Judith gas project in October 2019, with the pre-FEED phase the first stage of work to progress the agreement.
The pre-FEED study will include: design for a gas processing plant to operate adjacent to the existing Orbost gas processing plant; concept design for a 40km subsea pipeline from Judith gas field to a shoreline crossing; design for an export pipeline to the Eastern gas pipeline; and a refinement of product cost estimates and scheduling.
Emperor revised the Judith gas field production well stimulation to include four vertical production wells at project commencement with a fifth production well included in project year 15.
AGR, which was contracted by Emperor in June, has now completed the initial well planning phase of its well delivery process for the Judith-2 appraisal/exploration well.
The contractor’s scope of work includes well design, casing design, well costing, regulatory timeline and a drill rig market survey.
In relation to the drilling rig, Emperor has advised that formal tenders and direct negotiations with a preferred supplier to contract the most suitable drilling unit will commence once the company secures an exploration partner via a farm-in process currently being conducted.
In addition, CGG has recently completed a multi-client 3D seismic survey of the offshore Gippsland Basin, including the Judith gas field.
The first data from this survey will become available for licensing to Emperor Energy on commercial terms at the end of 2020, with final processed data available during 2021.