PENNINGTON FIELD RESERVES ESTIMATION
2P gross oil reserves for the Pennington field have increased from 1.7 MMbbls to 2.7 MMbbls following the successful drilling of Pennington-2 and Pennington North-1.
Beach Energy Ltd (ASX: BPT, "Beach") advised on 7 May 2014 that the Pennington-2 appraisal well in PEL 91 (Beach 40% and operator, Drillsearch Energy Ltd 60%) was cased and suspended as a future McKinlay/Namur oil producer. Pennington-2 was drilled approximately 250 metres south west of the Pennington-1 oil discovery, and intersected 10 metres of net oil pay within the target McKinlay and Namur reservoirs. The Mid-Namur reservoir, which hosts a separate oil pool, was also intersected 2.7 metres above the field oil water contact.
The next well drilled in the campaign was the Pennington North-1 exploration well, located approximately 600 metres north of Pennington-1. This well was designed to test a sub culmination of the greater Pennington structure. The primary target Namur reservoir was intersected five metres low to prognosis, with both the McKinlay and Namur target reservoirs water bearing, based on wireline logs. Strong oil shows were encountered over the Birkhead Formation and tested by an open hole drill stem test (“DST”). The test recovered 22 barrels of oil and approximately 10 barrels of water, mud and filtrate over a four hour flow period. The estimated rate from the DST was 125 barrels of oil per day. Based on the results of this test, Pennington North-1 was cased and suspended as a future Birkhead oil producer.
Reserves for the Pennington field were updated with preliminary mapping that included results from Pennington-2 and Pennington North-1. This update resulted in a 2P gross reserves addition of one million barrels of oil (“MMbbls”).