Taranaki firm contracts in to Aussie coal seam gas project
Energy News – Tuesday, 5 October 2010
New Plymouth-based company Horizon Energy Services is providing production operations personnel for a Queensland coal seam gas project.
Horizon is now into the fourth month of providing team leaders, operations people and mechanical technicians to WestSide Corporation Ltd, an ASX-listed company, assisting with WestSide’s Meridian coal seam gas (CSG) project in central Queensland.
And the Horizon Energy Services Australia Ltd contingent – two teams of four, all Kiwis – make up part of WestSide’s operations group.
“Horizon has been providing services to the project since early June and we will continue to do so though to at least early 2011,” says company founder and managing director Paul Garrett.
He is not disclosing the monetary value of this first contract for Westside but says Horizon is enjoying” a very positive pro-active team relationship with the Westside personnel”.
WestSide operates the Meridian SeamGas CSG fields, west of Gladstone in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, and the fields currently produce about four petajoules of gas per year. It holds a 51 per cent interest in Meridian SeamGas, with Mitsui E&P Australia Ltd holding the remaining 49 per cent.
And last month WestSide and Mitsui began drilling the first of a series of wells under a AUD$14.5 million first stage of a work programme designed to lift field production and increase reserves.
Brisbane-based WestSide also operates – in conjunction with QGC – a 50/50 joint venture exploration and appraisal programme elsewhere in the Bowen Basin – at the Paranui, Tilbrook, Mount Saint Martin and Bald Hill sites and it is conducting pilot evaluation programmes at Paranui and Tilbrook.
In addition, WestSide also has a position in a second part of Queensland, the Galilee Basin, where it holds two leases and expects to commence exploration activities there later this year, according to company investor and community relations manager Richard Owen.
“So, with WestSide active in so many areas, we are looking forward to assisting WestSide into the future, though any other potential contracts are of a confidential nature at this point in time,” says Garrett, who set up Horizon in New Plymouth six years ago after working in the New Zealand energy industry for more than two decades.
The company now employs about 30 people doing a variety of jobs domestically and internationally.
“Horizon had its sixth birthday early in September so this WestSide project is an exciting milestone for us,” he told Energy News.