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Exxon’s $120m Bass Strait bet fails to deliver gas

ExxonMobil’s search for a giant gas field at the Dory prospect in Bass Strait has come up dry, with the most anticipated east coast offshore oil and gas well in decades unable to deliver a source of gas for tight domestic markets.

But the US oil major says it has other exploration leads in Bass Strait and has revealed new options to try to maintain production at the big Gippsland Basin gas fields it owns with BHP.
Exxon Australia chairman Richard Owen has revealed a $120 million, two-well drilling program to test Dory, which Exxon bought from Liberty Petroleum last year, had not yielded a discovery.

“Unfortunately, after analysing the data, I can confirm that neither of these wells encountered commercial quantities of hydrocarbons,” Mr Owen said in an email to staff.
It was hoped Dory could provide gas next decade to the Longford gas plant, which is facing spare capacity as the big Bass Strait fields that have been the nation’s biggest domestic producer for most of the past 40 years start to rapidly decline.

The lack of a new Bass Strait discovery means the southeast of Australia is likely to be more reliant on importing gas through pipelines from Queensland or from the LNG import terminals that four proponents (including Exxon) are studying.

Mr Owen said the drilling program, which BHP elected not to participate in, had provided valuable knowledge and that there were more leads in the huge VIC/P70 permit where Exxon had drilled the two wells, known as Baldfish and Hairtail.

“The fact we are back exploring in Bass Strait is a reflection of the high demand for gas on the east coast, coupled with remarkable advances in seismic reprocessing technology and the skills and knowledge of our geoscience team,” he said in the email, seen by The Australian.
“By reprocessing seismic data using the latest technology, our geoscientists have been able to identify a number of prospective leads that merit further investigating as we continue to evaluate the full potential of this block.”

Mr Owen said exploration was just one way to get more value out of the Bass Strait fields and infrastructure.

“We are also maximising gas production from our existing fields by progressing key reliability and rate-enhancement activities, as well as pursuing development opportunities at West Barracouta, Snapper deep, Whiting and Kipper/East Pilchard,” he said.

“On top of this, we are studying plans for an LNG import terminal in Victoria,” Mr Owen said.

Exxon bought the Dory project from Liberty Petroleum for what is believed to be a royalty agreement last year, after the privately owned US firm did more studies on Apache’s apparently unsuccessful 2008 Dory well in Bass Strait.