pre open announcement, page-2

GAS POTENTIAL OF NORTHERN SECTION OF AMADEUS BASIN “SIGNIFICANTLY UNDER-ESTIMATED” – CENTRAL PETROLEUM

A new technical report released today has pointed to a significant under-estimation of the amount of gas likely to be trapped in the northern section of the Amadeus Basin, a producing oil and gas province near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
Assembled by Central Petroleum Limited (ASX: “CTP”), the report says newly described Neoproterozoic plays may host a total of over 12 trillion cubic feet of Undiscovered Gas Initially In Place (UGIIP) at “high” or P10 estimate levels, just in the northeastern section alone of the Amadeus Basin.
“The only known hydrocarbon production from the Neoproterozoic structures in Australia comes from the Amadeus Basin’s Mereenie and Palm Valley fields,” Central Petroleum’s Managing Director, Mr John Heugh, said today.
“Other geologically and structurally comparable Neoproterozoic/Cambrian basins in the world include the prolifically producing basins of Oman, the Eastern Siberian Platform and the Sichuan Basin,” Mr Heugh said.
“However, precedence in the Amadeus Basin has been given in the past mainly to exploration of the Ordovician sequence which hosts the Mereenie and Palm Valley fields.
“This has tended to sideline the Basin’s other gas formations in the northern section including the Marinoan Pioneer Sandstone (Ooraminna discovery) and the Julie Formation/lower Arumbera Sandstone (Orange and Dingo fields).
“Our research of this potential suggests the prospectivity of the Neoproterozoic in this area has been significantly under-estimated as the Pioneer Sandstone for example, has only been penetrated in one well, Ooraminna 1 drilled in 1963, and it flowed gas to surface.”
“Significantly, new test work shows that although these formations may flow from primary porosity or naturally occurring fracture systems, the formations are probably all candidates for modern-day fracture stimulation and new analysis suggests some of the gross gas columns are up to 100 metres or more. A fraccing programme at the Dingo gas field produced approximately double the previous gas flow.”
Central Petroleum will undertake new seismic mapping and study newly reprocessed data for the area, and plans to include at least the Pioneer Sandstone and the Areyonga Formation gas plays at the Ooraminna Prospect, in its drilling schedule planning later this year.
The Company’s expanding hunt for hydrocarbons in the Red Centre now encompasses exploration programs in coal seam gas, two active petroleum systems in the Pedrika Basin, about 340 kilometres southeast of Alice Springs and very large gas, condensate, oil and helium prospects in the Amadeus Basin.
With 270,000 km² of tenements, Central Petroleum is also the largest holder of prospective oil and gas acreage in onshore Australia, with a portfolio that includes the majority of the Pedirka and Amadeus Basins on the SA-NT border, all of the known Lander Trough north of Alice Springs and 15,000 km² of the Southern Georgina Basin in far west Queensland.