Project Profile
Value: US$100 million
Location: Western Australia
Water depth: 35 - 265 metres over the permits
Start-up year: 2014
Contingent resources: 109 million barrels of oil equivalent (WA-435-P and WA-437-P)
Surface area:
WA-435-P - 4,955km2
WA-436-P - 5,120km2
WA-437-P - 4,855km2
WA-438-P - 6,790km2
The WA-436-P, WA-437-P and WA-438-P Exploration Permits were awarded 100% to Finder and the WA-435-P Exploration Permit was awarded to Carnarvon on 4 August 2009.
Finder and Carnarvon have entered into a heads of agreement to swap 50% of the three Finder permits for 50% of Carnarvon’s WA-435-P, with Finder assuming operatorship of the Permits.
The Permits are situated in the north-western part of the Bedout Sub-basin within the greater Roebuck Basin, offshore Western Australia and lie in an under-explored area between the prolific Carnarvon Basin hydrocarbon province to the southwest and the Browse Basin to the northeast. The town of Port Hedland lies approximately 150 km to the south of the Permits and Broome lies 250 km to the northeast.
Finder sells its equity in 4 Bedout sub-basin exploration permits (its entire acreage holding) to Quadrant (03/05/2016)
The Bedout Sub-basin consists of an east-northeast to west-southwest trending Mesozoic depocentre that is filled with approximately 2.5 km of Palaeozoic sediments and 7 km of Mesozoic section. The sub-basin is separated from the Beagle Sub-basin to the west by the North Turtle Hinge Zone, and bounded to the northwest by the Bedout High. The Mesozoic section has generally experienced gentle structuring and thickens to the west before pinching out against and partly draping over the Bedout High. To the east and south the Mesozoic sediments thin and progressively onlap the older Palaeozoic section.
The Bedout High locally separates the Bedout Sub-basin to the south from the Rowley Sub-basin to the north and consists of uplifted and eroded Permo-Carboniferous sediments above an interpreted faulted basement core and is capped by Late Permian volcanics. Early-Middle Triassic sediments onlap the Bedout High from all directions and approximately 3 km of Late Triassic-Cainozoic sediments are draped over the top. The Bedout High is approximately 30 km wide at its upper surface which is expressed as a peneplain.
only six wells have been drilled in the Permits to date. The two wells, Phoenix-1 and Phoenix-2, drilled on the large Phoenix structure in WA-435-P both intersected extensive gas columns within lower-porosity, mid-Triassic reservoirs. In particular, Phoenix-1 recorded 110 metres of net gas-bearing section; however, further work is required to determine whether the gas discovery at Phoenix-1 could flow at commercial rates. A larger, untested structure in WA-435-P lies directly on trend with the Phoenix structure, 5-15 km to the southwest. Further to the southeast in WA-437-P lies yet another large, untested structure. Regional geology suggests that reservoir quality improves southward toward these prospects, but this model will need to be confirmed by drilling. These Triassic structures have significant potential on the order of several TCF’s of recoverable gas, if exploration and appraisal drilling are successful.
The Phoenix area contains five permits spread across about 28,000 square kilometres in the Bedout sub-basin between the Carnarvon and Browse basins. There is a proven petroleum system in the Block WA-435-P permit where BP in 1980 and 1982 drilled two wells — Phoenix-1 was a gas discovery and Phoenix-2 had gas shows with a tight reservoir. Other viable plays are recognised in these blocks including possible oil exploration potential at the shallower.
Operators:
Quadrant Energy (Macquarie/Brookfield): Operator with 40% interest
Finder Exploration: 20% interest
Carnarvon Petroleum Ltd.: 30% interest
JX Nippon: 20% interest
Contractors:
Polarcus Limited (Polarcus): New RightBAND(TM) multi-client project over the Roebuck Basin, offshore North West Shelf, Australia. The Capreolus 3D survey, supported by strong industry funding, will comprise approximately 15,000 sq. km and is designed to provide exploration companies with an extensive basin-wide high quality broadband 3D seismic dataset over and adjacent to the recent Phoenix South oil discovery.
DeGolyer and MacNaughton: Independent technical advisor to assess the potential recoverable oil within the Phoenix 3D seismic area (as outlined in the map below), which includes the Phoenix South-1 discovery and the Roc prospect, based on data provided by Apache.
Sub-contractors:
DownUnder GeoSolutions: Contract to process resultant acquisition data through a pre-stack depth migration routine by in Perth. Final data products are expected to be available within Q2 2016.