Semi-submersible rig Atwood Falcon drilled the three wells, at a dayrate of $499,500.

Murphy Oil closes three-well campaign dry

Australia

PERTH, April 30, 2015 – US exploration and production company Murphy Oil has said a third exploration well in the Perth Basin, Western Australia, has come up dry.

In its first-quarter results, the company revealed that the exploration well on the offshore Munia prospect, in Block WA-481-P was unsuccessful. The first two wells in the company’s three-well campaign on Block WA-481-P, Koel and Cisticol, were plugged and abandoned, seeing it take a dry hole expense of around $23 million in the first quarter of 2015. Overall, it booked a $31.8-million dry hole expense on the three wells.

The wells were drilled using the semi-submersible rig Atwood Falcon, at a dayrate of $499,500. Murphy Oil’s CEO, Roger Jenkins, had said earlier in 2015, that as the campaign got initiated, the company was targeting a combined 280 million barrels of gross mean resources, across the three wells.

The company was awarded block WA-481-P in 2012, as part of a joint venture with the Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and South Korean operator Samsung Oil & Gas.

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