Australian oil company Carnarvon Petroleum has been awarded the WA-524-P permit situated on the flanks of the Dampier Sub-Basin, a part of the highly prospective Greater Carnarvon Basin, on Western Australia’s North West Shelf.
Carnarvon said on Tuesday that the new 1,210 sq km permit is located on the Enderby Terrace, which contains a number of untested yet attractive play types in a proven basin which includes the Stag, Wandoo, and Legendre oil fields, as well as the Reindeer gas field.
Carnarvon’s Managing Director and CEO, Adrian Cook said: “Carnarvon is continuing to build its portfolio in anticipation of the next oil price cycle.
“There are a number of attractive opportunities in this permit that I am confident will become attractive drill prospects in the future. This area will benefit from the application of our technical expertise and recent improvements in technology that were not previously available.”
Three potential leads were identified within the block and the company said it aims to de-risk the elements of the play, with a number of geoscience workflows. This will include a regional source rock study and 3D seismic reprocessing with modern Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) aimed at greatly improving the quality of the 3D seismic interpretation.
The company said that its technical team will further investigate the potential of a secondary play system in the shallower Cretaceous stratigraphy, which has seen great success in the nearby Stag and Wandoo oil accumulations.
Carnarvon stated that due to leads being situated in relatively shallow water, located at a moderate reservoir depth and the acreage being near existing services and infrastructure, a successful exploration campaign would provide ‘attractive returns on investments’.