Comet Ridge lines up coal seam gas wells for production testing

Coal seam gas explorer Comet Ridge (ASX: COI) has wrapped up the latest round of evaluation drilling at its Mahalo gas project in Queensland, with two wells lined up to start production testing over the next week.

The company today reported it has completed the drilling of Sirius Road-2, the fifth and final well of the three-month long drilling campaign, with Silver City’s Rig 20 drilling rig now demobilised from site.

The lateral well, which was targeting the 3.3m Castor coal seam, was drilled to a total length of 1,990m and successfully intersected the Sirius Road-1 vertical well as planned.

According to Comet Ridge, 1,437m of the drilling was in the Castor, achieving 96% within seam.

The company is now moving ahead with the production testing of Sirius Road-1, planning to bring the well online over the weekend with testing expected to start next week.

Meanwhile, it is anticipating the start of production testing at the Straun-2 well (drilled in November) later this week.

Comet Ridge is also currently production testing the first well of the campaign, Memoloo-2, with results showing the well is performing as expected.

The Straun-2 and Sirius Road-1 wells are planned to be brought on slowly, while monitoring the water in flow performance and pressure draw down.

Core samples are currently being analysed for all three vertical wells (Memoloo-2, Straun-2 and Sirius Road-1) and will continue over the coming months.

Located in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, the Mahalo coal seam gas project is considered one of the largest undeveloped gas resources on Australia’s east coast with an estimated 172 petajoules of 2P gas reserves.

Comet Ridge operates and holds the majority 40% stake in the joint venture project. Its partners include Australian gas major Santos (ASX: STO) and Origin Energy’s (ASX: ORG) 37.5%-owned business Australia Pacific LNG.

By afternoon trade, Comet Ridge shares were up 6.25% to $0.34.