Energy company Santos on Tuesday announced the successful appraisal of the Corvus field, offshore Western Australia, with Corvus-2 confirming a significant gas resource in the Carnarvon basin.

The company, which holds a 100% interest in the well 90 km north-west of Dampier, drilled to a total depth of 3 998 m. It intersected a gross interval of 638 m – one of the largest columns ever discovered across the North West Shelf.

Wireline logging to date confirmed 245 m of net hydrocarbon pay across the target reservoirs in the North Rankin and Mungaroo formations, between 3 360 m and 3 998 m.

Santos reported higher permeability zones than what it encountered in Corvus-1, based on initial pressure sampling completed in the well.

Compared with Corvus-1, initial samples acquired from Corvus-2 indicated a significantly higher condensate gas ratio of up to ten barrels a million standard cubic feet of gas a day and a similar carbon dioxide content of 7%.

Corvus-2 is about three kilometres south-west of Corvus-1, which was drilled in 2000. The water depth at location is 63 m.  The field is about 28 km from the Reindeer platform, which delivers gas to the Devil Creek domestic gas plant near Karratha, and about 62 km to a Varanus Island tie-in point, all of which are owned by Santos.

In a statement released on Tuesday Santos MD and CEO Kevin Gallagher said: “Corvus-2 has delivered a fantastic result and has opened up a number of additional exploration opportunities in the region.”

He added that it is “particularly exciting” to realise a higher liquids content and significantly larger resource volume than expected.

“Corvus could be tied back to either our Devil Creek or Varanus Island gas plants, where it has the potential to increase the utilisation of our existing facilities as well as provide backfill and extend plateau well into the 2030s."

He said that the results highlighted the value of the Quadrant acquisition and Santos’ strategy of pursuing upstream brownfield growth opportunities around existing infrastructure.

“The rig will now move north to commence the Dorado appraisal programme,” Gallagher said.