Beach Energy has announced 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.
According to the company, the news wells effectively double the Otway Gas Plant production capacity with the ability to deliver around 180 terajoules of gas per day (TJ/d).
Connecting the remaining wells from the offshore campaign and nearshore Enterprise discovery will be required to meet the nameplate production capacity of 205 TJ/d.
Beach Energy acting chief executive Morné Engelbrecht said the connection of the wells is an important step towards delivering the company’s growth targets at a time when the east coast gas market is 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 first production growth target of 28 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) in FY24.”
Beach Energy said it is continuing its development campaign in the Otway Basin to meet the natural gas supply needs of the east coast market.
Drilling and testing of Thylacine North 1 well – the third well in the 6 well development – was also recently completed, with the rig preparing to move to the Thylacine West 1 well location to be followed by two more Thylacine development wells.
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