Roma

Location

ATP 336P permit, PLs 3-13, 28, 69, 89 and 93, Surat Basin, onshore eastern Queensland, approximately 440 kilometres west of Brisbane. Total acreage is approximately 4,000 square kilometres.

Participants

Interests vary across the different blocks:

Santos – 100% in Roma, 53.75% in Waldegrave and various other interests in smaller joint ventures (operator for major fields).
Origin – 46.25% in Waldegrave and various other interests in smaller joint ventures.
Drillsearch, Mosaic and OCA – varying interests in individual wells.

Discovered

The first gas field was discovered within the Roma township in 1900 by the Hospital Hill 1 exploration well: the first natural gas discovery in Australia. This gas was later used to light the street lamps of Roma for 10 days and periodically evaluated for commercial production prior to the 1960s.

First Production

Sustained gas production commenced in 1961 with the Timbury Hills 2 well supplying a gas-fired generator in Roma which represented Australia’s first commercial gas project. First production to Brisbane commenced in 1969. The first coal seam gas production in Australia commenced in 1988 from a single well in the Pleasant Hills field. The well continues to produce coal seam gas from Walloon Coal Measures.

Facility Details

The Santos assets in the Roma area comprise approximately 70 small to medium gas fields and several small oil fields.

The fields are gathered via approximately 500 kilometres of flowlines with the assistance of 16 nodal compressors and flow to ML1A meter station dehydration units. Here, water and condensate separation is undertaken prior to the flowing into the Wallumbilla LPG plant for compression.

Gas from the Churchie gas field and fields in the Mosaic-owned Silver Springs area flow into the same facility for processing.

Gas production is then sent via compression and a 440 kilometre pipeline east to Brisbane (via the Roma-Brisbane pipeline) or via a 520 kilometre pipeline north to Gladstone (via the Queensland Gas Pipeline).