New Zealand East Coast basin shale well spudded

TAG Oil Ltd., Vancouver, BC, has spudded an exploratory well that targets the Paleocene Waipawa black shale and Paleocene-Cretaceous Whangai source rock formations in New Zealand’s East Coast basin.

The Ngapaeruru-1 well is projected to 1,800 m on TAG’s 100% controlled PEP 38349. The same two formations are present on almost all of the company’s million-acre position in the basin.

Live oil recovered from shallow wells TAG drilled in 2011 and oil sampled from seeps in the basin confirm that the source of the high-quality oil was generated from these two formations. Extensive geotechnical work on the acreage, including proprietary 2D and 3D seismic, have confirmed that the source rock parameters in the play compare favorably to commercial world unconventional plays, the company said.