Tangiers Petroleum Limited has been granted Petroleum Exploration Permit NT/P83 (NT/P83) offshore Australia.
The permit lies in the Arafura Sea to the north of Melville Island and the Coburg Peninsula of the Northern Territory and is approximately 100 kilometres north of Darwin (Figure 1), Australia.
It comprises and area of approximately 15,000km2 and is in waters shallower than 200 m. A number of exploration wells have been drilled in the vicinity of the permit with gas discoveries to the west in the wells Caldita-1, Lynedoch-1 and ST-1, Lynedoch-2; and gas shows in the Beluga-1 well. Oil shows were encountered to the east of the permit in the Kulka-1 and Tasman-1 wells. The large Evans Shoals and Abadi gas fields are located to the west and northwest of the permit in the Malita Graben-Darwin shelf area.
Mark Ceglinski, Executive Chairman of Tangiers Petroleum , commented, “The grant of NT/P83 is a exciting step in furthering the Company’s strategy to expand its exploration portfolio and leveraging the Company’s technical expertise to identify potential leads and plays in areas believed to be highly prospective for hydrocarbons. NT/P83 is an excellent complement to the company’s existing Moroccan and Australian acreage.”
The permit lies in the Money Shoals Basin, a relatively undeformed Jurassic to Cainozoic sequence that unconformably overlies the mainly Paleozoic rocks of the Arafura Basin. Part of the acreage extends into the Arafura Basin with folded and faulted Palaeozoic to lower Mesozoic rocks. The Golburn Graben is also present in a portion of the permit and is a dominant northwest to southeast Palaeozoic intra-cratonic rift basin. With several age units of source and reservoir rocks, this permit area is expected to be highly prospective for hydrocarbons.
The Company’s proposed exploration program will initially focus on performing geotechnical studies and the acquisition of 500km of 2D seismic data.
[mappress] Press Release, August 14, 2012