awe, origin & norwest set to frac perth basin.

[Source: au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business]

AWE, partners set to frac Perth Basin
Peter Klinger, The West Australian March 20, 2012, 6:28 am

AWE and its partners, including Origin Energy and Norwest Energy, are within months of beginning a controversial fraccing campaign to test the shale gas potential of the onshore Perth Basin.

AWE said yesterday it had confirmed the availability of hydraulic stimulation equipment supplied by Halliburton so that a three-well campaign could start in June.

The campaign will include the Woodada Deep-1 and Arrowsmith-2 wells for testing of their shale gas potential, while AWE hopes the fraccing will improve flow-rates at the Senecio-2 tight gas well.

The Arrowsmith well is on a permit operated by Norwest, whose share price has risen from 4.4¢ to 6.7¢ yesterday since the WA Government confirmed three weeks ago that it would uphold an Environmental Protection Authority recommendation not to assess the Arrowsmith fraccing program.

The Perth Basin is regarded as one of the biggest potential shale gas depositories in the world. However, technical complexity of extracting the gas from hard, deeply-buried shales coupled with controversy surrounding the fraccing process, mainly because of the use of chemicals and the potential for gas to escape, has deterred further development work.

Fraccing is used extensively in Queensland's coal seam gas industry, which is where Halliburton's equipment is in use.

A shale gas boom in the US, where the unconventional source accounts for about 20 per cent of the country's domestic production, has spilled over into Australia, with most focus on the Cooper, Perth and Canning basins.

The appeal of the Perth Basin lies in its proximity to existing pipeline infrastructure and the Perth and South West gas markets.


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