United States/ Cayman Islands oil company Anadarko says its first New Zealand ultra deep-sea exploration well failed to find commercial quantities of oil or natural gas after a million-dollar-a-day campaign off the Raglan coast.
Drilling of the Romney 1 well in the deepwater Taranaki Basin – about 160 km off the Raglan coast – began in November but it was found to be “water-bearing” after reaching its total depth of 4619m, the Texas-based firm announced.
“Though the well, drilled by the state-of-the-art drillship Noble Bob Douglas in 1550m of water, did not encounter commercial quantities of oil or natural gas, the data collected from the well will be very useful in determining future activity,” the company said.
The firm said the Romney 1 well would be abandoned and plugged in accordance with New Zealand regulations. Anadarko spokesman Alan Seay said the Noble Bob Douglas would now move to another exploration site in the Canterbury Basin off the Otago coast.
The drilling failure has been welcomed by Climate Justice Taranaki who said, “Anadarko’s failure to find commercially viable oil off the Taranaki coast is a call for celebration and a victory for the planet”.
But many Raglan people aren’t so sure about Aanadarko’s announcement seeing it more as way of taking the protest heat off the company. They point out that a well that might not have “commercial quantities of oil and gas” this year, may well be commercially viable in 10 years.