Carnarvon raising cash for Dorado appraisal drilling

Carnarvon Petroleum is raising cash to fund its part of the appraisal drilling cost at the world-class Dorado offshore oil discovery in W. Australia where Santos is the operator. Carnarvon is a partner with a 20 percent stake.

For illustration: A Noble Corp.-owned jack-up rig. Source: Flickr; Author: SP Mac
For illustration: A Noble Corp.-owned jack-up rig. Source: Flickr; Author: SP Mac

The Australian oil company is looking to raise $50 million through a placement of 151.6 million new shares at an issue price of $0.33 a share.

“Carnarvon is undertaking the Placement to fund appraisal and exploration opportunities in order to continue to commercialize world-class discoveries in Australia’s North West Shelf, to fund further exploration and to maintain sufficient working capital,” Carnarvon said.

The company plans to use the cash for Dorado discovery testing through drilling the Dorado-2 and Dorado-3 wells, starting in April 2019. Carnarvon recently said the Dorado-2 and Dorado-3 wells would be instrumental in preparing for the FID in late 2020. The discovery sits in the Bedout basin, 100 kilometers north of Karratha, offshore W. Australia.

Carnarvon is also looking to fund engineering and design studies to develop the Dorado field; Potential development focused 3d seismic over the Dorado and Roc fields, an exploration drilling of the Roc South-1 well located between the Roc and Dorado.

Furthermore, Carnarvon is also planning a potential seismic survey over offshore prospects Pavo and Apust which are located near the Dorado find, so a part of the cash raised might be used for that, too.

The Dorado appraisal wells will be drilled using the Noble Tom Prosser jack-up rig.

The original oil discovery at the Dorado field was made in mid-2018 by Quadrant Energy.  The Dorado-1 well had been targeting gas, but struck instead a find believed to be W. Australia’s largest oil discovery in years. Australia’s second-largest oil and gas company Santos then moved in and bought Quadrant in November 2018 for a purchase price of $2.15B.

Offshore Energy Today Staff