Australian oil and gas exploration company Quadrant Energy started drilling the Roc-2 appraisal well, located within the WA-437-P in the North West Shelf of Western Australia, on Saturday, July 9, 2016.

Quadrant is the operator of the WA-437-P exploration permit in the Canning Basin with 80% interest and Carnarvon Petroleum is its partner with the remaining 20% interest.

Carnarvon stated on Monday that the main aims of the Roc-2 well are to appraise the Roc gas-condensate discovery in the Caley section that Carnarvon announced on January 4, 2016, to progress towards proving a volume above the minimum economic field size and to establish potential flow rates for future development planning.

The company added that secondary objectives for the well are to explore the hydrocarbon potential of the deeper Milne member, where ‘encouraging’ hydrocarbon shows were observed during the final phase of drilling the Roc-1 well, and the shallower Huxley member, where oil shows were encountered at Roc-1.

The Roc-2 well will be drilled in around 100m water depth, approximately 160 km north-east of Port Hedland in the Bedout sub-basin of the greater Roebuck basin. The well will take approximately 60 days to drill down to a total depth of around 5,250 metres, including the cutting of 120 metres of core, before the evaluation program is undertaken.

Carnarvon concluded that the evaluation, including wireline logging and flow testing, is expected to extend over a further 40 days.

Carnarvon also said on Monday that its partner Quadrant and the operator of the WA-155-P(1) exploration permit in the North West Shelf of Australia discovered the presence of hydrocarbons in the Outtrim East-1 well.