Of course, the corollary to the Waihapa story is that indeed if...

Of course, the corollary to the Waihapa story is that indeed if there is hydrocarbon in the Tikorangi here at Matuku then it will be nicely behind casing when work in the lower sections is completed and the well is being prepared for P&A. I guess that would be both the time and the opportunity for attempting a flow test out of the Tikorangi. However at this stage with the hole uncased as it is, and therefore certainly no chance of risking any attempted test flow, you have to wonder just what might have been going on to occupy those missing 5 days.

I can see maybe a little bit of weather outage, perhaps some breakage and/or downhole gear problem, certainly some logging, and if the interval is sufficiently interesting as we would hope, then maybe some extensive downhole logging and tool running, and of course the 300m of hole drilling. However unless the breakage or downhole problem has been reasonably involved I'm not sure that we could say that all this would occupy a full 5 days. Granted, this is all guesswork from a distance and without any personal experience in such matters, so I could be way off here.

But this would be my scenario, conditional on the well drilling into the Tikorangi Formation and some 'shows' occurring early in the interval: OMV have a huge investment in the Taranaki Basin and in particular are clearly focused on the potential of PEP51906. Now whereas in the usual situation that the JV represents multiple parties contributing to the cost of a well, and therefore presumably there is some very focused financial decision making occurring through the drilling of such a well, with Matuku-1 it is OMV alone who is paying the bill. On this basis, what then is the likelihood that OMV would take the opportunity once significant hydrocarbon was detected in the Tikorangi Formation to switch over to coring of the full interval? That would certainly be maximising the information gathering potential, there and then as the opportunity presented itself. And in doing so this could be our most hopeful scenario for explaining away those lost 5 days. As a side comment I note that OMV does have in-house personnel with extensive experience of hydrocarbon recovery in the Tikorangi Formation, so they would not be slow in grasping the nettle of the moment.