Carnarvon was awarded the AC/P62 permit, which holds the Condor project, over an area of 1,512 square kilometres within the Vulcan sub-basin in the Bonaparte Basin, in November last year.
The proven oil producing Bonaparte Basin on Western Australia’s North-West Shelf contains numerous fields such as the Skua and Montara oil fields, which are adjacent to the Condor project.
Carnarvon has identified several large Jurassic leads over multiple reservoir levels, with potential for secondary plays in the shallower, Late Cretaceous stratigraphy.
With water depths of approximately 100 m, there is the possibility of utilising lower cost jack-up drilling to pursue prospects, with the shallow waters also conducive to lower cost field developments.
In the upcoming quarter, Carnarvon will progress its technical work over the area utilising the new 3D seismic and performing geoscience workflow.
The second permit picked up by Carnarvon was the EP-497 inboard of the Carnarvon Basin on the North-West Shelf.
The permit contains the previously drilled Santa Cruz-1 well, drilled in 1994, which discovered a gas cap and possible oil discovery.
However, due to poor 2D seismic data quality, the understanding of the exact scale of the structure is to this day uncertain.
Carnarvon plans to perform geological studies in the initial primary two years, followed by an optional four year program including an offshore geochemistry survey to define the extent of the oil discovery before committing to acquiring new 3D seismic or well within the permit in year six.
With very shallow water depths of between 10 and 20 m, the use of jack up drilling and low-cost development is possible.
Carnarvon Petroleum holds 100 per cent equity and operatorship in both AC/P62 and EP-497.