More land released for oil and gas exploration

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Australian government has announced that 21 new areas in commonwealth waters will be made available for oil and gas exploration through the 2017 Offshore Petroleum Exploration Acreage Release.

The areas sit across eight basins in commonwealth waters off the Northern Territory, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia coasts, and in the Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands.

Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Mattew Canavan said the release supported the government’s action to strengthen domestic gas supply by making new areas available for oil and gas exploration.

“There are 20 areas available for work programme bidding, where petroleum companies need to submit comprehensive exploration plans, across a mixture of mature and lightly explored basins. A further area open for cash bidding is located in the highly prospective Dampier sub-basin of Western Australia’s Northern Carnarvon basin,” Canavan said.

“Following strong bidding on Round 2 of the 2016 acreage release, I hope to see this momentum continue to this year’s release.”

The Queensland government on Monday also announced that it would soon release another 395 km² of land for gas development to supply to the east coast Australian market.

Natural Resources and Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said that two new parcel of lands totalling 395 km² would be released in the Surat basin in the next two months, and were in addition to the 58 km² of land released in February.

Any gas produced will only be able to be sold in Australia.

“This initiative shows again that Queensland is ahead of the pack on gas supply policy action,” Lynham said.

“We had a positive response from industry to the first pilot release of land in February and it’s clear there’s an appetite in the market to develop Queensland’s gas reserves.

“Releasing more land will drive employment and investment in regional Queensland and eventually add to the gas currently available for domestic use.”