Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Apr. 22 -- The United Nations has allowed Australia to greatly extend its continental shelf after 15 years of lobbying.
The UN found that Australia's territory should be extended by 2.5 million sq km—an area about five times the size of France. The new area takes in extensions of the Exmouth Plateau and Wallaby Plateau in the west, the Great Australian Bight in the south, and the Lord Howe Rise in the east.
All are areas the government scientific body Geoscience Australia thinks could hold petroleum reserves and are future potential exploration areas.
No one will put a figure on likely petroleum resources in this new offshore territory, but all agree it is virtually unexplored.
The announcement leaves a lot of unexplored territory that may produce Australia's next oil and gas province, according to Belinda Robinson, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) chief executive.
"We know very little about [the new areas] but a number of them are adjacent to existing producing areas, including the Browse and Carnarvon basins off Western Australia, so we'd be hopeful they may be prospective," Robinson said.
However, she added that having jurisdiction over the acreage is not enough. The challenge for Australia is to persuade potential investors to risk money here rather than elsewhere.
"This requires a two-pronged approach: first to ensure the availability of baseline geological information and second to ensure that the fiscal framework takes account of the high costs and high risks involved in exploring these areas," she said.
