Reservoir studies indicated that horizontal wells drilled in seam and intersecting vertical production wells were the optimal design to produce coal seam gas from the Narrabri CSG Project. An aggressive campaign of production pilots was drilled in 2009 and early 2010 to prove the potential of three coal seams in the Project area. The pilot wells included two dual lateral horizontal wells, with each horizontal well intersecting three vertical wells; a tri-lateral horizontal well which intersected four vertical wells; two long and three short single lateral horizontal wells intersecting one vertical well each; and three short, single lateral horizontal wells drilled from a single drilling pad to intersect three vertical wells. The importance to the company of the results required a high degree of certainty in well construction success. There was very little time for rig start up issues to be addressed before the first horizontal well was drilled and early development of a competent wellsite team was essential. With little precedent and many unknowns, a low risk, fully engineered approach to the well design and drilling operations was adopted. Connection of the vertical and horizontal wellbores is critical, and intersection techniques have been developed and refined. The Rotating Magnet Ranging System was introduced to Australia for this project, and adoption of this technology has subtle implications for directional drilling equipment and techniques. The wellbore hydraulics design and management while drilling program differed in several respects to conventional horizontal drilling, and performed very well. The selection of the rig package, down-hole equipment and personnel underpinned the success of the 2009 – 2010 drilling campaign, and is described. The technical standards developed by the operation will interest other coal seam gas operators who face the challenge of economic extraction of coal seam gas, particularly from anisotropically fractured or deeper, lower permeability coals.

It has been suggested that the comparatively numerous finds of gold in Wiltshire barrows are due to their having been, more or less, on the direct route of the traffic in Irish gold and other objects. On Mere Down, north of Gillingham, a skeleton was found in a grave under a small barrow. With it was a beaker of type B, also a flat, tanged copper dagger, a piece of worked bone, and two gold discs of a well-known Irish type. The surviving disc is very thin, and has embossed upon it an irregular cruciform ornament enclosed within a circle, and a row of very small punch-marks round the edge (fig. 1).

No abstract

The photographs here reproduced, were taken from the air on 30 June 1926, by Squadron-Leader Insall, V.C., M.C., who was then stationed at Netheravon. The large circular earthwork which appears with a series of concentric dots within its area had always been regarded as a “ring” or “disc” barrow much wasted and defaced as a result of many years cultivation. The ring barrow is a type of pre-historic burial place which occurs comparatively frequently on the Downs of Wiltshire and adjacent counties but is rare elsewhere. It consists of a circular earthen bank with a corresponding ditch, usually on the inner side. The actual burials, apparently invariably after cremation, are usually found in one or more mounds near the centre of the circular area thus enclosed. The banks and ditches are continuous and form unbroken rings; they vary in size from a few yards in diameter up to nearly 200 ft. The smaller dark rings shown on the lower part of the photographs near the Amesbury road probably represent the filled-in ditches of barrows that have been destroyed by cultivation.

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms * The excavations were carried out by Mr. and Mrs. B. H. Cunnington, of Devizes, with the kind permission of landlord and tenant.