Petromin is about five years old, and has never previously been an operator — instead it holds the state’s equity in a handful of petroleum projects and has been learning the ropes from its joint venture partners such as Oil Search, InterOil and Horizon Oil.
However, Petromin has now taken the plunge into a frontier area off the north-east coast called the New Ireland basin, where it is the operator of 10 exploration blocks, nine of which were awarded in 2012.
The company’s exploration manager Jack Sari says New Ireland is an under-explored Tertiary basin with high-risk high-reward opportunities.
Sari says the drivers for exploration in the New Ireland basin are the favourable tectonic setting, proven analogues in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, and high potential for reefs.
No well has ever been drilled in the basin, but old seismic data suggests thick sediments with the potential to generate and accumulate petroleum.
Petromin’s plan is to acquire new seismic within the next two years.
The company also has lodged applications for four offshore permits in the eastern Gulf of Papua, which is also an unexplored province. Petromin is not the only novice operator with offshore acreage.
Twinza Oil is a privately-run company with a 90% operating stake in Block PPL 328, which contains the old Pasca discovery.
Petromin owns the other 10% of PPL 328, and says the objective is to find out if there is sufficient gas and condensate left in Pasca, which had a blowout in 1983.
Australian publicly-listed company Coral Sea Petroleum is the operator of Block PPL 358 in the Cape Vogel basin, a lightly explored frontier basin where it says oil and gas seeps have been reported.
Coral says it is evaluating available data to determine if a viable petroleum system is present, and what additional data will need to be acquired to further quantify exploration risk.
Also in the Cape Vogel basin, two unknown companies, Hornby Energy and Penant Resources, each own one large permit — PPL 396 and 397, respectively.
Private company Rockwell Energy is the operator of blocks PPL 275 and 276 in the Gulf of Papua, although farm-in partner Oil Search has an option for an 80% operator interest in PPL 276.
A batch of 3D seismic was acquired in PPL 276 several years ago, and it is understood the recent Dima 3D seismic survey also covers PPL 276.
Privately owned Australian player Palmer Exploration owns 100% of three permits in the eastern Gulf of Papua called PPLs 379, 380 and 381.
Another unknown company, Gini Energy, owns two permits in the same eastern Gulf of Papua area called PPLs 374 and 375.
It remains to be seen whether any of these private companies has the intention of taking their acreage to the next level of maturity.
