ROG ASSEMBLES COAL SEAM GAS HOLDINGS WITH AN EYE TO TAPPING CHINA & INDIA
It is a Monday morning in a gray, drab London and I am off to the Carlton Tower Hotel in the posh Knightsbridge district of the UKs capital city to meet the Australian natural resources entrepreneur Alex Bajada.
The Carlton Tower is a favourite haunt of Middle East businessmen but they seem thin on the ground this day. This is either because 8 oclock on a cold December morn is too early for them or because they are preoccupied elsewhere sorting out their investments in Dubai in the light of the recent alarms there.
Alexis is in situ, though, in his usual place in the hotels Rib Room which serves as the breakfast area. Alex makes the Carlton his base when he is in London for his various activities. He is a corporate consultant with over 30 years experience in the setting up and managing ASX listed companies. He is currently Chairman of Excalibur Mining Corporation, AXG Mining Limited and Odin Energy.
He has been an independent director of a large Western Australia based superannuation fund for the last 16 years and served as chairman for over ten years. But he is also an oil man and this is what we are here to talk about.
He is not on the board of, but has been involved in, the rejuvenation of the ASX quoted Red Sky Energy as a coal seam gas Company.
Coal seam and other unconventional gas plays have become all the rage in Australia as the realisation has sunk in there are rapidly growing markets in Asia generally but particularly in China and India, that Australia can tap into. It has been estimated that Asian LNG demand will grow to 290 million tonnes per annum by 2030. This equates to 200 tcf of gas production and commitments over the next 20 years. Australias market share of this demand is forecast to grow from 13 per cent to 36 per cent.
Geographical proximity is one obvious reason that Australia has become keen on the Asia market. It is reckoned that in order to meet Asian demand six new North West Shelves would be needed. The North West Shelf is, of course, a major gas area for Australia.
Australian still has many under-explored basins for gas, including Galilee, Eromanga, Pedrika, Amadeus, Beetaloo, Canning and Arckaringa. Over the July to October 2009 period Red Sky acquired significant acreage holdings across a number of basins, amounting to hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. These include the acquisition of Cydonia Resources, Norwest Hydrocarbons and Surat Resources with substantive positions in Queensland and NSW as well as a farm in to Central Petroleums extensive acreage in the Northern Territory. Its target is to have a portfolio with 100 tcf of gas-in-place.
Red Sky has now got new management, particularly in the form of Rohan Gillespie as managing director. He has previous experience as vice president and chief operating officer in charge of BHP Billitons coal seam gas business. But it may be that Red Sky never becomes a producing company. It is an acreage play, according to Alex, set up on the assumption that there is a large number of sizeable LNG players yet to take up a position in Australia even though there are already some substantial incumbents like Origin, Conoco, BG, Santos, Petronas, Arrow and Shell already active.
