H3 Energy seismic reprocessing lights up WA gas prize

H3 Energy says modern 3D reprocessing of legacy seismic data has given the company a sharper new focus on its hulking Warro gas field in Western Australia’s North Perth Basin.

The company says a seismic technique known as pre-stack time migration (PTSM) processing has now been completed by Australian seismic specialists Velseis and has already proven good enough to identify sand packages and higher-porosity reservoir “sweet spots” across the R7 licence.

That matters because sweet-spot mapping is likely to be a key part of any fresh commercialisation push at Warro, where the company is pursuing methods to convert a very large known gas resource into commercial flow.

The seismic project, supported by a $50,000 Exploration Incentive Scheme grant from the WA Government, is running ahead of schedule, with higher quality pre stack depth migration (PSDM) processing now set to begin.

‘This project is already proving valuable to the company and the WA Government’s EIS project funding has helped make it possible.’

PSDM is the gold standard in seismic imaging. It creates a highly accurate 3D picture of the rocks underground by accounting for the different speeds at which seismic waves travel through varying rock types, allowing geos to pinpoint drilling targets with far greater confidence.

H3E says the depth migration work could be critical in accurately placing future horizontal wells designed to connect the most favourable parts of the reservoir.

The Warro field is no minnow. H3E has described it as the largest proven resource in the Perth Basin, with 1.5 trillion cubic feet of P50 unrisked recoverable gas on the project’s R7 block, which contains four cased and suspended wells. The field is positioned only 30 kilometres from the established Dampier to Bunbury natural gas pipeline.

The company’s most recent technical work has also suggested that earlier problems in appraising Warro may have been tied more to completion strategy, interval selection and discrete water-bearing fault zones than to any fundamental problem with the reservoir rocks themselves.

H3 Energy chief executive officer Nik Sykiotis said: “We are extremely pleased with the results that Velseis has achieved to date on this project. The new imaging has been a step change over the legacy data set and will give us higher confidence in mapping the deeper targets on the R7 Permit. The data quality is also good enough to help us identify the sweet spots in the reservoir, provided that the rock physics works.”

H3E’s recent data overhaul has also given the company another look at deeper targets beneath the known Yarragadee reservoir. It says the deeper rock layers now appear far more continuous and sharply defined, giving its technical team a better shot at identifying deeper conventional gas targets that could be tested relatively cheaply by simply deepening one of Warro’s existing wells.

That idea is supported by recent success at the nearby Walyering field, 60km south-west of R7, where commercial flow was achieved from an unstimulated interval of the Cattamarra Coal Measures at a depth of 3225m.

Importantly for a junior looking to punch above its weight, the company has opened its data room to several third parties that are reviewing Warro with a view to a potential farm-in. A well-funded partner with the right technical muscle could be a game-changer for a project that still needs careful appraisal but already carries the sort of scale that keeps Perth Basin gas watchers interested.

With the project still on track for completion by the end of September, H3E has bought itself a better map and a more compelling farm-in story. Most notably, the company now has a clearer pathway towards determining if Warro’s big gas numbers can finally be coaxed from the ground into a commercial venture.

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