Australian company analysing prospects in two areas

An Australian oil company which has an interest in two large offshore permits for oil exploration in Maltese waters said its technical analysis showed that the "prospects are large enough to contain commercially viable reserves" and merit further investigation.

The 2002 annual report of Pancontinental Oil and Gas NL says the company has completed the interpretation of 75 kilometres of two-dimensional seismic data acquired earlier this year.

"This interpretation has shown the prospects are large enough to contain commercially viable reserves. Subsequently, in the light of this very encouraging new information, further work is in progress to analyse the reservoir and structural characteristics of the prospects and to plan an additional 250 kms of 2-D seismic within Area 5.

"This new data will more fully define the extent and characteristics of the reefal/biohermal trends present in the permit beyond current seismic control."

The area in question covers about 14,800 square kilometres (3.7 million acres), designated as 'Area 5' and 'Block 3 of Area 4'.

The company directors said they believed the reserves would provide an attractive opportunity for a European multinational exploration and production company.

An overseas private company, Afrex Ltd, of which Pancontinental chairman H.D. Kennedy is a director, is the operator and holds the remaining 60 per cent equity in the permits.

Water depths in these two areas range from 100 to 400 metres, which are comfortably within the 1,000-metre plus water depths attainable with current offshore drilling and production technology.

The north westerly sector of Area 5 is the subject of a maritime border dispute between the Maltese and Tunisian governments.

The company's annual report says that a review of the existing data indicated the presence of geological features of similar age and characteristics to numerous major commercial oil and gas fields in offshore Tunisia and Libya and onshore Libya.

The largest and closest of these are the Tunisian 300-400 million barrel Isis oil field, approximately 20 km west of the permit boundary, and the Bouri field, 55 km to the south in Libyan waters.

Bouri is reported to have reserves in excess of a billion barrels of oil.

The company believes that all the major prospects revealed to date are entirely within areas claimed only by Malta.

The company said the presence of a developed pipeline infrastructure to service the offshore Tunisian producing oil and gas fields, and the major gas pipeline systems that connect the principal producing areas of onshore Algeria and Tunisia with southern Europe, will enable the product from any future discoveries to quickly reach the large energy markets of central and western Europe.