Australia: Central Petroleum Announces LNG Preliminary Concept Appraisal Study

Central Petroleum Limited, as Operator has pleasure in providing the results of a preliminary development concept appraisal report by Holt Campbell and Payton Pty Ltd, an independent engineering consultancy based in Perth, Western Australia.

The report is based upon the successful potential discovery and field development of a gas field or fields in the Amadeus Basin with similar production parameters to the existing Palm Valley field currently operated by Magellan Petroleum Corporation with co-owner Santos.

The conclusions of the report are as follows:

1. An LNG export project based on a large gas discovery in Central Australia would have to be a 3 MTA (3 million tonnes of LNG per annum) or larger project.

2. Some 4 TCFG of gas EUR (expected ultimate recovery) would need to be found to supply a 3 MTA LNG export project.

3. Indicative costs developed in this screening study suggest that the Capital Investment required for the whole project might be of the order of A$1,700 per annual tonne.

4. This is marginally lower than the Capex numbers (about A$2,000 per annual tonne) that have been announced for the active Queensland LNG projects.

“The results of the concept study mean that the Company will continue to examine, inter alia, both GTL and LNG options for potential monetisation of any large enough gas discoveries in our permits and applications” said John Heugh, the Company’s Managing Director, “and this should be of great benefit to the Company in promoting interest in our acreage exploration to potential new joint venture partners”.

The study is not meant to be and should not be construed to be a financial forecast but rather an in-principle basic evaluation of the potential conceptual feasibility of the production of LNG at a Darwin based plant being fuelled by as yet undiscovered gas in CTP’s and its wholly owned subsidiaries’ permits in central Australia.

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Source: Central Petroleum, January 20, 2011;