WorldOil

What’s new in exploration

In March 2009, InterOil Corp.’s Antelope-1 well in Papua New Guinea (PNG) flowed 382 MMcfd and 5,000 bcpd on a production test (see cover). This may be the world’s highest flowrate for a single well—it certainly set a new record for the island nation that lies 250 mi north across the Coral Sea from Australia. Several giant gas fields have been discovered there since the late 1980s, but the Antelope-Elk discovery opens a new play area in the eastern part of the Papuan Basin. Here, Tertiary carbonate reservoirs are the objective, in contrast to Mesozoic sandstone reservoirs in the western basin area. Antelope and other recent discoveries could make PNG an important exporter of LNG in the near-future.