American Shoreline Inc. and J. Paul Rainey, both of Corpus Christi, plan to begin the first phase of a gas exploration program in Western Australia by yearend.
As equal partners, Amshore and Rainey were recently awarded exploration permit EP-349 by the state's Department of Mines. The 400,000 acre permit area is in the Perth basin, about 30 miles northeast of Perth.
It contains the Gingin, or Bullsbrook, anticline, which is about 40 miles long and 5-6 miles wide. Rainey said the anticline is "highly gas prone" from 11,000 to below 15,000 ft.
Amshore and Rainey plan to spend about $5-15 million during the venture's initial program for seismic surveys and test wells as soon as they acquire other partners. They plan to shoot more than 100 line km of seismic and drill a test well to at least 15,000 ft into Lower Jurassic Cockleshell Gully multiple sands.
Four wells were drilled in the permit area during 1965-81. One of them, 1 Gingin, produced 1.4 bcf of gas and 17,000 bbl of condensate from a limited reservoir after it was drilled in the early 1970's, Rainey said.
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