Jadestone plans February production restart at Montara

Jadestone Energy, Singapore, expects to restart oil production from its 100%-owned Montara oil field in the Timor Sea by the end of this month following completion of remedial work ordered by the Australian National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) in September 2022.

NOPSEMA’s review of the remedial plans and operational readiness of the Montara Venture FPSO is complete, and the general direction issued by the authority has been closed, said Jadestone president and chief executive officer Paul Blakeley.

Hull and tank repairs and the scheduled four-yearly plans for topside maintenance activities are progressing well, with operational readiness and production restart targeted for late February, he said.

“We have elected to carry out most of this year’s planned annual shutdown work in parallel with the tank work to maximize efficiency during this period,” he added.

Jadestone shut Montara field in 2022 following oil leakage from a storage tank and the subsequent discovery of a defect in a water ballast tank on the FPSO.

Montara operations involve oil production from platform production wells for Montara field and subsea wells for nearby Swift, Skua, and Swallow fields. Oil from the subsea wells is piped via subsea flowlines to an unmanned wellhead platform and then to the Montara Venture FPSO.

The fields lie in permits AC/L7 and AC/L8 about 630 km off the Western Australian coast in 77 m of water.

In early 2022, the Montara project’s remaining 2P reserves were estimated to be 20 million bbl of oil. Production before the shut-down was about 7,500 b/d.