As Bass Strait in Australia marks a half century of production, Esso engineers and scientists continue to expand their understand- ing of the basin.
compression capacity on Marlin B, enables greater production efficiencies along with increased volumes of oil and gas. Turrum gas, which contains higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) than oth- er Bass Strait fields, will continue to be reinjected back into the reservoir until a gas-conditioning plant comes online at Longford in 2016. Four more gas wells and an oil well were drilled this year.
Maximizing value Recent activity in the basin includes the Kipper Tuna Turrum (KTT) project, encompassing three fields in Bass Strait that hold an estimated 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas, plus 110 million barrels of oil and gas liquids. The KTT project reflects the company’s focus on extracting maximum value from the invest- ment and Gippsland Basin field
in Australia will always hinge on Bass Strait,” he says. “Our investments have been a critical building block underpinning the economic growth of this nation. “At the peak of oil production in the early 1980s, the venture was delivering 10 percent of total federal revenue. Today, it meets nearly 40 percent of Australia’s East Coast gas demand.”
infrastructure. For example, oil facilities on theWest Tuna platform, installed in 1996, have been con- verted to produce additional gas from the Tuna field, which has pro- duced oil for more than 40 years. In the Turrum field (the project’s largest), the nearby 47-year- old Marlin A platform has been connected to the newMarlin B platform by bridge. The combina- tion of platform facilities, including
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