Elixir’s Richcairn well opens new CSG basin in Mongolia

Elixir Energy Ltd., Adelaide, has uncovered a new coal-bearing subbasin within its 100%-owned Nomgon IX coal seam gas production sharing contract in the South Gobi basin of southern Mongolia.

The Richcairn-1S well was drilled to a depth of 792 m and encountered 16 m of coal and 20 m of highly carbonaceous mudstone, determined by wireline logs.

The well is the first of Elixir’s to intersect coal purely from seismic identification. It lies in a depocentre defined by four seismic lines with a length over 100 km.

The rig is moving to an up-dip step-out location to spud Richcairn-2S, which will, with other future wells in the new subbasin, evaluate key coal seam gas characteristics such as gas content and permeability, the company said.

Elixir will mobilize a third rig to accelerate the program during the remainder of 2021.

Meantime, the Nomgon Central-1 well in the Nomgon subbasin reached total depth of 559 m and logged 65m of coal. Data gathering is under way to underpin design of future production testing and various laboratory tests are expected during the next few months.

The next well in the region, Nomgon-6, will spud in the coming days. Results will help design a 2022 production testing campaign.

Elixir expects to begin a new seismic program shortly to acquire 300 km of 2D data in addition to the 220 km of data already acquired, processed, and interpreted this year.