Cooper Drilling Plan Off Oz Stalls

Sydney-listed Cooper Energy has had to delay work on the second well in its two-well drilling campaign off southeast Australia because of issues with mooring chains at its rig.

Cooper reported a gas find on September 6 at its Annie-1 well in the Otway basin off Victoria. The company has delayed the borehole’s abandonment because of the failure of two of Diamond Offshore Ocean Monarch semi-submersible’s eight mooring chains, it said in a September 16 statement.

Cooper now has to repair the two chains and inspect the other eight to ensure they are working properly. It expects to complete this work later this week, allowing it to resume abandonment operations.

The company said it would take more than a month to determine the cause of the failure of the chains. As such, it has proposed to defer drilling of the Elanora-1 well, which had been due to start right after Annie-1’s abandonment.

Elanora-1’s drilling “will be considered in the context of future campaigns,” it said.

“While we are closing the drilling campaign early after the completion of one well, we are pleased with its outcome,” managing director David Maxwell said. “The discovery of the Annie gas field has added to our portfolio of development opportunities which can add to our reserves and production growth. Elanora remains as an exploration target to test in the future.”