Santos has made a fourth gas discovery offshore Western Australia at its Winchester-1 exploration well in the prolific Carnarvon Basin, the company said in a statement Thursday.
Santos Vice President Western Australia and Northern Territory John Anderson described the Winchester gas discovery was a "significant" outcome.
"Potential commercialization options could include the expansion of Santos' existing production through jointly owned infrastructure, or alternatively via proximal existing third-party LNG infrastructure," he added.
Winchester is located in the WA-323-P permit, 135 kilometers (84 miles) northwest of Dampier, in a water depth of 75 meters. The permit is held 75% by Santos and 25% by Australian junior Octanex.
The acreage is traversed by a Woodside Petroleum-owned gas pipeline that feeds the Pluto LNG project near Karratha in Western Australia. Woodside has in the past sought third-party gas to feed a second production train at its 4.3 million mt/year Pluto project.
A Santos spokesman said a tie-back to the Woodside-operated North West Shelf infrastructure was also possible. The North West Shelf LNG and domestic gas joint venture is expected to need "backfill" gas as its own reserves start to deplete towards the end of this decade.
Another option would be to develop the gas through the Reindeer/Devil Creek domestic gas project, which started up early in 2012, the spokesman said. Santos owns 45% of the Reindeer/Devil Creek project, with US independent Apache holding 55%.
"One of the reasons we went into this permit was the proximity of the vast amount of infrastructure that could be used to develop it," the Santos spokesman added.
Santos' latest success follows consecutive discoveries at the Crown, Bassett West and Bianchi wells.
Tests at Winchester-1 has confirmed 40 meters of net gas pay between 3,614 meters and 3,721 meters, Santos said. Multiple gas samples have been recovered and were being analyzed, it added.
Santos' Head of Exploration Bill Ovenden said the tests had confirmed excellent reservoir quality at Winchester. The well will now be deepened to evaluate the gas-bearing potential of further objectives, he added.
