Whoosh, up went shares in Carnarvon Petroleum yesterday after it revealed it had made what it called "significant" oil discovery in WA.
In a statement to the ASX, Carnarvon CEO Adrian Cook said the result was transformational for the company.
Carnarvon owns 20% of the Dorado-1 well (in the waters of the Roebuck Basin off the northwestern WA coast), the unlisted Quadrant Energy (owned by Macquarie and Brookfield of Canada) owns the rest and the news set a fire under Carnarvon’s shares as they surged to 28 cents
Mr Cook said Carnarvon estimated the net oil pay to be about 80 metres and the drilling program had three more targets to drill through.
“This is a significant discovery given the quantum of net pay thickness, the quality of the oil and the extremely good reservoir characteristics,” he said.
The company said in its statement to the ASX "oil has been recovered from excellent reservoir containing a gross hydrocarbon package of 96.1 metres and a net pay thickness of 79.6 metres in highly porous and permeable sands.”
The West Australian reported yesterday that Quadrant group executive Fred Wehr said the light oil column was drilled into last Thursday evening.
Speaking at the Petroleum Club of WA in Perth on Tuesday night, he said he hoped to drill through the other targets in the next seven to 10 days.
“We see this Dorado as going to be a big deal,” he said. “It’s just staggering what we’ve got here, I can’t talk volumetrics but this is enormously material.”
“I’ll tell you that the low case is solidly commercial, the mid-case is awesome and the upside is staggering,” Mr Wehr said when asked about the size of the prospect, according to the report in the West Australian.
“We are talking about something that is really a game changer, certainly for Quadrant, definitely for Carnarvon, but potentially for the industry as well,” he said.
“I hope I’m not overstating this or overselling it, but this is something I’ve never seen in a 35-year career,” the West Australian reported him as saying.
Quadrant was formed in 2015 from assets bought from Apache Energy. Woodside bought other assets.
