Buru Energy Ltd., Perth, accepted an offer for the award of bid Block L20-1, onshore Carnarvon basin, Western Australia.
The award is to a joint venture of Buru and Mineral Resources Ltd. (MRL), Perth, with Buru as operator.
The location is a departure from Buru’s focus on the onshore Canning to the north where the company operates seven exploration permits and five production licences.
The Carnarvon permit contains a relatively unexplored sedimentary sequence similar to the petroleum-bearing Devonian and Carboniferous-aged sequences Buru is working with in the Canning, the company said.
L20-1 covers the onshore portion of the Peedamullah shelf, a geological unit bordering the main productive region of Carnarvon basin.
Tubridgi gas field (now used for gas storage) lies immediately south of the permit, while the town of Onslow lies within the permit. Other infrastructure includes Chevron’s Wheatstone gas processing plant and associated pipeline infrastructure, along with the pipelines from Varanus Island.
Buru said previous exploration has been sporadic and mainly aimed at the shallow sedimentary section. The underlying Canning basin equivalent has either been ignored or gone unrecognized.
Buru and MRL’s initial mapping has identified conventional oil and gas prospects that can be evaluated with relatively shallow wells on the basis of good quality, although sparse, existing seismic data.
