Eastern Corp is another Queensland based gas explorer. It specialises in one of the hottest topics in energy, coal seam gas (CSG). Eastern Corp holds a 68% ownership in the Galilee Energy project located in central Queensland. Its the light blue area in the middle of the map at the bottom left of this page. You may have heard of the Bowen Basin and Surat Basin coal, oil and gas fields in Queensland. But you may not have heard about the Galilee Basin. Well, its next to the gas rich Bowen Basin. And it is just several hundred kilometres from the area that Linc Energy had explored so successfully with the Emerald Teresa coal tenement. The reason this is a gamble is Eastern are still at the early stages of developing the project. But that hasnt stopped Australias leading energy provider, AGL, from a commitment to invest $37 million in Easterns CSG project at Rodney Creek. This is a project that consultants JR Holland & Associates have reported as having a 97% methane content and a Gas in Place estimate of more than 20 trillion cubic feet. Just to put that in context, the Gorgon Project operated by Chevron is estimated to have a resource of 40 trillion cubic feet. Bottom line: If this project reaches its potential we are potentially looking at a very big return. How big? Remember, this is still early days for Eastern and a lot can happen. But lets draw on some real numbers that have been used elsewhere in the industry. When BG Group attempted to takeover Origin Energy it valued the reserves at about 60 cents per gigajoule. But that was trumped when ConocoPhillips offered Origin
ECU Price at posting:
33.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
