palta drilling to resume ?

From the West Australian April 18

"Drilling is set to resume at Royal Dutch Shell's controversial Palta well near the Ningaloo Reef following lengthy repairs to the rig.

Shell would not comment last night but it is thought Noble Corp, the owner and operator of the Noble Clyde Boudreaux, has finished work to repair the rig's blowout protector.

Drilling could resume as early as Thursday.

Noble last week admitted its rig had been out of action for 54 days because of the BOP fault, up from an earlier declared downtime of 46 days.

The company hires out the rig at a day rate of $US417,000 ($402,700) although it is expected Noble, rather than Shell, will have to wear the cost of the downtime.

The Noble Clyde Boudreaux has been contracted to Shell since last October.

Its first project was drilling the Palta-1 exploration well, on a permit owned by Shell and Mitsubishi and 70km off the WA coast.

The well's proximity to the Ningaloo Reef has alarmed environmentalists.

Palta's drilling, to test a prospect that could contain an estimated 13.5 trillion cubic feet of gas spread across two permits, began in mid-October and was supposed to take a little over two months to complete.

The well's progress has been watched with interest by the three juniors which own the adjoining permit - WHL Energy, Strike Energy and Cott Oil and Gas. Once Palta is drilled and abandoned, Shell is planning to send the Noble Clyde Boudreaux from the Carnarvon Basin to the Browse Basin to drill development wells for its ground-breaking Prelude floating LNG project.
It is thought that the long and unexpected delay at Palta is not yet jeopardising Shell's Prelude development timetable, which foresees first LNG in 2016. Shell has contracted the Noble Clyde Boudreaux until January 2015."