From United Press International, August 16:
Carnarvon Petroleum said the surprise find off the coast of Western Australia may be "truly spectacular."
A high-risk exploration target offshore Western Australia has paid off and could lead to a major rush in commercial interests, a consultant group said Thursday.
Australian companies Quadrant Energy and Carnarvon Petroleum announced surprised results of a drilling operation at its so-called Phoenix blocks off the coast of Western Australia state. At its first well, dubbed Dorado, the joint venture partners announced they ran through a 393-foot column of oil while searching for natural gas.
That would quantify as a major oil discovery, with as much as 150 million barrels of commercial prospects possible.
"The commerciality of this will be assessed in time, but it is the oil in Dorado and potentially successful adjacent structures that will now become our immediate focus," Adrian Cook, the managing director at Carnarvon, said in a letter to shareholders. "And we expect this to be highly profitable for shareholders in due course."...MORE
