Publications

Exploration in Salawati Basin commenced in early 1970 and marked by the discovery of Miocene carbonate of Kais Formation, which later became the most extensive play type for the drilling of the subsequent exploratory wells. Trend of exploration mainly focused on the onshore part of Salawati Basin until late 80s and moved toward the offshore area and Salawati Island to the western portion of the basin in early 90s. It was followed by the discovery of Matoa Field in 1991. The play type of these three areas, onshore West Papua, Salawati Island, and Offshore West Papua remains the same: Kais Carbonate of build-up reef, pinnacle reef and carbonate platform. During 40 years of exploring the Miocene Carbonate play type of Kais, by early 2000 most of the carbonate features in the area had at least one exploration well succeeding to prove the reservoir presence. Dry wells are claimed to be due to charge efficiency and migration path. The exploration mindset was then shifted to go deeper exploring for Mesozoic clastic reservoir, known as analogous in the neighboring Bintuni basin. Limited wells that were purposely designed to test the hydrocarbon potential of the Mesozoic section of the basin, most of the wells were an exploration tail as a result of deepening the well from the Miocene Kais target. Hence, the location for the deeper potential is in all likelihood not being on the optimum location. This paper will enlighten the sweet-spot identification for the deep potential that supported by current basin modelling and seismic reprocessing study.