Oil discovery in West. Australia

Press, 4 December 1982, Page 20

Oil discovery in West. Australia

PA Perth A significant oil and gas discovery in the South Pepper No. 1 well offshore in the Carnarvon Basin of West Australia has caused a speculative flurry in the shares of the partner companies. Mesa Australia, Ltd. operator for the consortium members, announced that tests of the South Pepper No. 1 had shown nine metres of oil and 14 metres of gas. The partners in the well are Mesa Western Mining Corporation and Offshore Oil NL (with 20 per cent each), Pancontinental Petroleum and Golden West Hydrocarbons (10 per cent each), Pan Pacific Petroleum and Petro

Energy (6.66 per cent each) and Sydney Oil and Weeks (3.33 per cent each).

The discoveries were made in the interval 878 metres to

1848 metres. Mesa’s exploration manager, Phillip Linley, said that “it was early days" and it was extremely difficult to determine the importance of the finds as testing had only begun in the past few days. The well is situated about 30 kilometres from the Barrow Island oilfields which last year produced eight million barrels of oil. The exploration manager of Pan Pacific Petroleum NL, Noel Frith, said he was “very encouraged” by the find. “There’s a good solid chunk of oil there which could be commercial," he said.

“As a first step I would expect that the operators would drill a couple of step-

out wells to test the structure.”