Icon begins to realise Cooper dream
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
Andrew Snelling
WORKING with companies like Chevron and Beach Energy in one of the most prospective basins in the country is a pretty good position for a small-cap junior explorer to be in, which might explain why Icon Energy is channelling all its resources towards its surprisingly large slice of the action.
Operations at ATP 855
Icon, with its market cap of $94.5 million, has a 35.1% interest in the ATP 855 permit which lies on the Queensland side of the border with South Australia in the Cooper-Eromanga.
The licence covers 1674 square kilometres and, at last count, contained a best estimate of 28 trillion cubic feet of gross unconventional prospective raw natural gas - with 10Tcf of that allotted to Icon's stake.
With six exploration wells drilled in the permit, all of which have intersected gas shows, the name of the game at present is the hydraulic stimulation and extended testing of four of them to better understand gas production potential in the permit.
The joint venture has already obtained highly encouraging results from its Halifax-1 well in the southwest of the permit, which produced a record setting 4.2 million cubic feet of gas per day, making it the highest flowing shale gas well in the Cooper Basin.
Hervey-1, Redland-1, Etty-1 and Geoffrey-1 are now next on the agenda, with fraccing operations announced today at the Hervey-1 well, targeting five zones in the Upper Patchawarra formation.
"We're looking at different methods of stimulating and flowing the gas back," Icon commercial manager Richard Holliday told Energy News
"Rather than what we did in our first well, Halifax, [where] you drill a well and you put 14 or so fracs in the entire 13-1400m depth of the well and you flow it all together, this time we're actually targeting specific zones.
"That way we'll get a more definitive outcome in terms of which is the most prolific zone to flow gas, leading to a commercial outcome."
A commercial outcome could see the JV provide welcome relief to a gas-hungry eastern market through existing infrastructure, though more drilling will be required to prove up longer-term production from a full-scale development.
Icon has a longer-term game in mind as well, which could see it sell 2 million tonnes of LNG per annum to Chinese company Shantou Sino Energy for a 20-year term.
The contract for the deal is in place, but requires Icon to find 2Tcf of proven reserves and obtain authorisations for development and operation of the required infrastructure.
We do have access to turn these resources into reserves because we have a contract, so we have some long-term aspirations," Holliday said.
It's with these kinds of goals in mind that Icon is happily focusing all its attentions on ATP 855.
"If 855 turns out to be commercial, then we will continue to focus all our assets and expenditure on 855," Holliday said.
"Because the potential of that tenement is so large, should it prove to be commercial, we could be talking gas out of there for the next 50 years.
"With the infrastructure in terms of pipelines and processing, it's an ideal opportunity to grow that."
ICN Price at posting:
15.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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