TAG Oil Ltd. (TAG Oil) announces the completion of drilling and testing operations at the Cheal-D1 exploration well, which is located near the northern portion of TAG Oil’s 70% working interest and operated Cheal East permit (PEP 54877) in the Taranaki Basin of New Zealand. TAG Oil drilled and completed the Cheal-D1 well approximately five days ahead of schedule and under budget to a total measured depth of 2,400 m. The Company perforated an 18 m section of gas bearing sands in the Urenui formation. Following extensive testing it was determined that gas was present, however not in sufficient quantities to produce as an economic discovery. The well will be suspended with a plan to potentially re-enter in the future.
All current drilling commitments on the Cheal East permit have now been met. Further testing work may be undertaken in the future to investigate other potential exploration opportunities in the neighboring fault blocks, as well as the potential of the two intervals of deeper Mt. Messenger sands that were encountered while drilling.
Toby Pierce, TAG Oil’s CEO commented, “Needless to say, I am disappointed that this well did not contain commercial quantities of hydrocarbons, however, based on these test results and further mapping, we will investigate the potential of side-tracking the well into an adjacent fault block in due course. TAG will now focus on preparing to drill the high impact Pukatea exploration well in fiscal Q4/18, advancing its farm-out activities and working on a range of optimization and exploitation opportunities.”
