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Approvals sought for offshore Sydney drilling

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

BOUNTY Oil and Gas and investee Advent Energy are moving forward with plans to drill in PEP 11, offshore Sydney Basin, after lodging applications for environmental approval.

Advent Energy made two separate submissions to the Department of Environment and Water, Heritage and the Arts.

The first submission is for approval to carry out a small-scale geophysical site survey in PEP 11.

The survey will cover two areas of 12 square kilometres each within the potential drilling area to acquire further geophysical information for potential future exploration drilling.

According to Advent, the timing of the survey is dependent on vessel availability but will take place over about four days at each of the two locations between October 2009 and September 2010.

The second submission is for approval to drill one exploration well in the permit.

Advent and Bounty are searching for a suitable jack-up rig to drill the well on the Fish prospect, one of six leads identified by Advent last year following a technical review of the permit.

The Fish prospect is targeting P10 recoverable gas resources of more than 9 trillion cubic feet.

Advent said the well would be drilled vertically to a depth of 2500m and wireline logs will be run to determine the presence of any hydrocarbons.

The well is expected to take 30 days to drill.

Bounty Oil and Gas is the operator of the offshore Sydney Basin project and holds a 75% interest.

Advent Energy holds a 25% working interest through its wholly owned subsidiary, Asset Energy, and has the right to earn an 85% interest from Bounty Oil and Gas.

Meanwhile, BioPharmica, which develops biomedical research and technologies within Australian universities and hospital institutes, has signed an exclusive option agreement with Advent Energy.

Under the deal, BioPharmica will subscribe for 9.7-19.4% of Advent’s share capital at 50c per share.