Found this article from a couple of days ago, makes for an...

Found this article from a couple of days ago, makes for an interesting read for those that haven't seen it yet.

Its from Heraldsun.com.au

Two finds hopefully come up trumps

John Beveridge From: Herald Sun January 26, 2010 10:41AM

OIL and gas discoveries tend not to make much of a dent on the public consciousness, even if a fair chunk of Australia's future prosperity relies heavily on them.

So it will come as a bit of a surprise to most of us to realise that in the last year, when oil prices rose 75 per cent, Australia produced two of the best discoveries in the world.

Judged by leading industry employment and information provider Rigzone, only the exciting oil and gas province of the Gulf of Mexico matched offshore Western Australia by producing two important discoveries.

Making up the rest of the top 10 were big discoveries made in waters off Brazil, China, Israel, Britain, Venezuela and West Africa.

The two in Australia were in the same general region of offshore WA -- the Browse Basin and the lower Carnarvon Basin.

According to Rigzone, the Karoon gas joint venture's discovery of a 200-metre gas column in its Poseidon-1 well could be one of Australia's biggest gas resources, even rivaling Woodside Petroleum's first North-West Shelf discoveries which now feed our largest LNG export terminal on the Burrup Peninsula near Karratha.

It is early days yet though and a second test well (Poseidon-2) is still being drilled to test what is thought to be a very large but complex gas field.

The second big discovery was made by Woodside in the Greater Pluto area of the Carnarvon Basin, with the Martell-1 exploration well producing a gas column of 110m in good quality reservoir sandstones.

About 290km from Karratha, that well expanded the amount of gas available for the Pluto LNG project and is boosting arguments for a second LNG train to process the gas.

Karoon Gas shares yesterday rose 23 to $7.59, while Woodside shares eased 28 to $44.09.