Australian oil exploration company Carnarvon Petroleum has been awarded a new offshore permit in the Southern Vulcan Sub-basin, on Western Australia’s North West Shelf.
Carnarvon said on Monday that the permit, designated as AC/P63, would be known as the Eagle Project.
This 585 km2 permit is in shallow water and, according to the company, contains multiple attractive leads in the same proven oil producing basin that includes the Talbot, Jabiru, and Cassini / Challis oil fields.
Carnarvon added that the Cygnus MC3D Phase 3 survey, acquired by Polarcus over approximately 542 km2 of the recently awarded project, was expected to create a new standard in the interpretation of the prospectivity in this permit.
The Australian company said it wanted to mature the identified leads to prospects within the block, with a number of geoscience work-flows as part of the work program, including a satellite seep survey, petrophysical reviews, burial modeling, fault seal analysis, rock physics analysis, and seismic inversion of the Cygnus MC3D.
Carnarvon identified several Jurassic and Cretaceous leads, over multiple reservoir levels. According to Carnarvon, there is also a potential for secondary plays in the shallower, Late Cretaceous stratigraphy that will be the focus of ongoing technical investigations.
Managing Director, Adrian Cook , said: “The Eagle Project is another demonstration of our team’s ability to acquire oil-prone exploration permits within proven petroleum systems.
“This is Carnarvon’s second permit within the Vulcan Sub-basin, adjacent to the Skua and Cassini/Challis oil fields. Given the shallow water depths, jack-up drilling is possible, meaning the potential for lower cost drilling and field developments in the permit.”
In related news, Carnarvon said last week that it identified over 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable prospective resources in its Labyrinth project in the WA-521-P exploration permit off Australia.