Abstract

The Indonesia-Australia Joint Authority Offices for the Timor Gap Zone of Cooperation were established in Jakarta and Darwin in March/April 1991. Initially, regional surveys were conducted in the open acreage. Area A was then subdivided into fourteen Production Sharing Areas and competitive bids were invited. Following bid assessments, recommendations, and Ministerial consent, the Joint Authority offered Contracts to nine consortia for eleven of the Production Sharing Contract Areas. Execution of these Contracts was undertaken between December 1991 and February 1992, and all consortia agreed to terms and conditions incorporated in the Treaty, the Petroleum Mining Code and the Production Sharing Contract, including Directions and Regulations issued by the Joint Authority under Article 37 of the Petroleum Mining Code. Exploration activity under the Production Sharing Contract regime commenced with seismic data acquisition on 24 January 1992. A total of 34,000 kilometers of seismic data have been acquired, processed, and interpreted. A further 19,000 kilometers of Aeromagnetic data were acquired. The HYDRA-1 exploration well was the first well drilled in Area A under the Timor Gap Production Sharing Contract regime. This well was spudded on 7 December 1992 by Marathon Petroleum Timor Gap West Limited, using Seadrill Proprietary Limited's "Falcon" semi-submersible drilling unit. The well reached a total depth of 2,685 meters before being plugged and abandoned. Drilling by the "Falcon" continued into 1993 for Marathon with the drilling of the Basilisk-1A and Naga-1 features. Results have been encouraging. Approximately 7,000 kilometers of additional seismic data acquisition has been programmed for 1993 and a further seven exploration wells are planned for the latter part of the year.