Carnarvon Petroleum Ltd., Perth, has acquired 100% of Timor Sea permit WA-523-P, which borders the western edge of the Joint Petroleum Development Area between Australia and Timor Leste and contains the small abandoned Buffalo oil field.
The permit was awarded through the government gazettal process.
Carnarvon believes the region is still prospective and it bid a work program consisting of the reprocessing of existing 3D seismic data followed by interpretation and analysis of the data during the first 3-year term.
Carnarvon says reprocessing will take about 12 months and has already begun. The full-waveform inversion technique to be used mirrors the company’s successful application to the Phoenix project on the North West Shelf. This method, along with other modern processing technologies is expected to deliver improved depth imaging enabling detailed remapping of prospects in the permit.
Depending on results the company may elect to acquire new 3D seismic in the area followed by an exploration well during the second 3-year term.
Buffalo field was discovered by BHP Petroleum Ltd. in 1996 12 km southwest of Laminaria field and brought on stream using a fixed wellhead platform and a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel in 1999. The field was later acquired by Nexen Petroleum Inc. and finally abandoned in 2004.