Cooper Energy has revealed that a failure of mooring chains at its offshore Otway gas exploration program has led to delays.
The Annie-1 wellbore has been securely plugged with downhole cement plugs installed. However, abandonment of the well has been delayed following the failure of two of the Diamond offshore ocean monarch drilling rig’s eight mooring chains.
This incident has required repair to the affected chains and inspection of the remaining six chains.
Cooper expects work will be completed later this week, at which point final abandonment operations will resume.
Abandonment of Annie-1 is therefore now expected to be completed within the next week.
Analysis into the cause of the failure of the two mooring chains could take more than a month to complete. As a result, Cooper has proposed to defer the drilling of the Elanora-1 well that was scheduled to following Annie-1.
Drilling of Elanora-1 will be considered in the context of future campaigns.
Cooper managing director David Maxwell said while the company was closing the drilling campaign early after the completion of one well, it was pleased with the outcome.
“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,” Maxwell said.