Page 10 - AsianOil Week 45

AsianOil OCEANIA AsianOil

While the company’s interests in Victoria and Beach’s sizeable upstream developments
SA should help it to target an anticipated gas sup- carry with them some equally hefty financial
ply shortfall in the East Coast market, which the obligations, requiring some careful steward-
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has ship from the company’s management. This
warned could hit Victoria as soon as 2023, Beach is process already appears to be underway, how-
also counting on its interests in the country’s west to ever, if the company’s recent deal with Red Sky
advance its export-orientated goals. is any indication.
Western Australia potential Red Sky delight
The company has stakes in two major gas plays Australian junior Red Sky Energy revealed this
in WA, both of which are anticipated to provide week that it had agreed to pay AUD1 ($0.73) for
backfill options for the state’s liquified natural gas Beach’s 100% interest in petroleum retention
(LNG) export industry. licence 13 (PRL-13), which is located in SA’s
Beach owns 21% of WA-359-P in the off- onshore Otway Basin. PRL-13, which covers
shore Carnarvon Basin, where senior partner 17.5 sq km and contains the Killanoola oilfield,
BP started drilling the shallow-water Ironbark-1 lies close to the Jacaranda Ridge and Haselgrove
exploration well on October 31. BP owns 42.5% gas fields and Katnook gas processing facility in
of the licence. the Penola Trough.
The well – projected to take 70-90 days to Red Sky said on November 6 that under the
drill – will test the Ironbark gas prospect that is deal it would assume all liabilities relating to
estimated to hold 15 trillion cubic feet (424.8bn the licence’s decommissioning, abandonment,
cubic metres) of prospective recoverable gas rehabilitation and remediation or restoration.
resources. Ironbark-1’s primary target is the The junior plans to “re-start” the Killanoola-1
Deep Mungaroo play, which lies at 5,335 metres well once the deal has been finalised and intends
true vertical depth (TVD). to resume oil production using existing infra-
If the pre-drill estimates are accurate then, structure and enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
according to Citi, Ironbark would be the larg- techniques.
est undeveloped gas resource in Australia and The Killanoola-1 exploration discovered 34
would emerge as the most competitive backfill degree API oil at a depth of 850 metres in 1998
option for North West Shelf (NWS) LNG. and previously flowed at rates of up to 300 bar-
The company also has a 50% non-operated rels per day (bpd). Red Sky said it did not expect
interest in the Waitsia project, which has been the field to hold commercial quantities of gas.
dubbed one of the country’s largest onshore While a second well – Killanoola Southeast-1 –
discoveries in the last four decades and is also was drilled in 2011 and also discovered oil, it has
widely anticipated to supply NWS LNG. not been tested.
Waitsia is being developed in partnership Red Sky said it intended to record a 3D seis-
with Japan’s Mitsui and Co. and is the only pro- mic survey, test Killanoola-Southeast-1 and
ject that received an exemption from the WA complete a field development plan (FDP).
government’s announced onshore gas export By divesting PRL-13, Beach has been able to
ban. Beach aims to reach a final investment free up essential cash flow that would otherwise
decision (FID) on the second stage of Waitsia’s have been tied up in end-of-life obligations. This
development by the end of this year, paving the will allow it to continue driving potentially trans-
way for the project to feed around 1.5mn tonnes formative exploration and development efforts
per year (tpy) of LNG production from late 2023. elsewhere in the country.v

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 45 12•November•2020