Carnarvon snaps up new permit offshore W. Australia

Carnarvon Petroleum has been awarded the AC/P62 permit within the Southern Vulcan Sub-basin, offshore Western Australia.

According to the company, the large 1,512km² permit, located in the “highly prospective” Bonaparte Basin, on Western Australia’s North West Shelf, contains multiple attractive leads in the same proven producing basin that includes the Montara, Jabiru, Skua and Challis oil fields.

“Carnarvon prides itself on applying leading technologies to its technical work to assist in unlocking an area’s potential,” the company said.

It said that the recent Cygnus 3D survey acquired by Polarcus over 682 km² of the recently awarded AC/P62 acreage is expected to create a new standard in the interpretation of the prospectivity in the Vulcan Sub-basin.

Previous seismic interpretation in this area has been hampered by poor quality vintage seismic data, the company explained, adding that Carnarvon aims to mature the prospects within the block with a number of geoscience work-flows as part of the work program, including a satellite seep survey, high-resolution biostratigraphy, fluid inclusion analysis, petrophysical reviews, burial modelling, fault seal analysis, rock physics analysis and seismic inversion of the Cygnus 3D.

Carnarvon has said it has identified several large, robust Jurassic leads, over multiple reservoir levels. There is also potential for secondary plays in the shallower, Late Cretaceous stratigraphy that will be the focus of Carnarvon’s ongoing technical investigations.

Managing Director, Adrian Cook said, “AC/P62 is another demonstration of our team’s ability to acquire oil prone exploration permits within proven petroleum systems. This is Carnarvon’s first permit within the Vulcan Sub-basin, adjacent to the Skua and Montara 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. I look forward to seeing the next phase of our team’s technical work and having the prospects within AC/P62 matured to drillable status.”