Gippsland Offshore PetCATHY Norman's big-time ambitions for...

Gippsland Offshore Pet

CATHY Norman's big-time ambitions for Gippsland Offshore Petroleum are
continuing to take shape.

After taking GOP in to high-leverage exploration plays in Jamaica,
Madagascar, France, Kenya,Britain and New Zealand, Norman has now organised
exposure for GOP to the LNG potential of the Browse Basin, talked about earlier.

The Browse is bursting with LNG projects. Projects proposed or being chased
down include those by Woodside/Shell, Shell/Nexus, Karoon/ConocoPhillips and
Japan's Inpex.

Expect to hear some news on ground-breaking letters of intent from Chinese
LNG buyers for Browse gas during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in
Sydney.

So it's not a bad time for a junior such as GOP to cut itself in on the
action. It's effectively acquiring a 100 per cent inter-est agreed in Browse
basin permit AC/P 36 through a proposed takeover offer for privately owned oil
and gas explorer Finder Exploration.

The $25 million takeover will be satisfied from the issue of 80 million GOP
shares at a price of 31¢ a share, pointing to a $65 million market cap for the
enlarged GOP.

There is more to Finder than the Browse permit, most notably its equal share
of the GOP-led joint venture in Jamaica, which picked up five huge exploration
blocks in that country's first licensing round in 20 years.

The AC/P 36 permit in the Browse sits 80 kilometres north of the Inpex-operated
Ichthys gas field (8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas). It won't be long
before GOP has some action there either, as the permit has already been covered
by three dimensional seismic surveys. There is a one-well commitment on the
block in 2009 but it won't surprise to see GOP farm out a chunk of the cost and
risk to one of the big boys ahead of the action.