Alcoa's search for fuel to help fire its WA alumina refineries is set to pick up pace as it prepares to drill a key well designed to unlock the big Warro gas field near Moora.
Hot on the heels of Empire Oil & Gas' hydrocarbon discoveries at Gingin, which the Perth junior is now trying to fast-track into production, Alcoa and Transerv Energy hope to spud the Warro-4 appraisal well in two weeks' time.
The well, the second of an exploration and development program worth up to $100 million and funded by Alcoa, will try to generate more positive results than Warro-3, which achieved a flow rate of only five million cubic feet of gas when fracced before being overcome by water inflows. Warro was discovered by WA Petroleum in 1977.
However, despite estimates the field could contain as many as 10 trillion cubic feet of gas, the tight nature of the reservoir required extensive fracture stimulation that made its development uneconomic.
Transerv and Alcoa believe that advances in so-called fraccing technologies since then have greatly enhanced their chances of extracting Warro's gas.
Alcoa is WA's biggest gas user and sees Warro as a source for its future needs. Alcoa has often cited a lack of cheap gas as an impediment to its $2.2 billion Wagerup refinery expansion plan.
The aluminium giant has also funded exploration in the onshore Canning Basin by Eric Streitberg's Buru Energy, although so far without success.
Transerv and Alcoa will be using the same rig - the Weatherford 826 - for Warro-4 that drilled Empire's successful Red Gully-1 well.
The rig is expected to be mobilised from Empire's permits by the end of this week and prepared for Warro-4, which is scheduled to spud on April 10.
Independent expert Gaffney Cline has estimated Warro's recoverable resource at 1.1tcf.
Alcoa's investment will give it a Warro stake of up to 65 per cent.
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