Australia has shale oil field with an estimated 5 to 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil that seems to duplicate Bakken oilfield in the USA

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An encouraging development was recently announced by Baraka Petroleum Limited (“BKP”) concerning shale oil potential in two permits in the Southern Georgina Basin in which they have an interest (EP127 and EP 128 covering approximately 30,000 km2). The estimates prepared independently by US based Ryder Scott for these permits ranged from 5 to 11 billion barrels in prospective recoverable resources at the “low” to “high” estimate levels respectively. The Georgina basin is in the middle of Australia. the field also has about 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Georgina Basin, which covers most of the central-eastern part of the Northern Territory, is one of the most prospective undeveloped onshore petroleum provinces in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

The basin is one of several large intracratonic basins found in central Australia that are filled mainly with Paleozoic and Precambrian sediments (about 1,000-5,000 metres thick). Intracratonic basins are worldwide in occurrence and are normally found within continental interiors and away from plate boundaries. Other well-known intracratonic basins are the highly productive Williston Basin (located in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan) and the Parana Basin in South America. Both the Williston and the Georgina Basin areas contain massive source rocks. The Cambrian strata of the Arthur Creek (Georgina Basin) is considered to be similar to the Mississippian succession (Brakken Shale) of Western Canada & North Dakota that has produced more than ten tcf of gas and one billion bbls of oil.

The operator east of ATP-582 (Central Petroleum) stated in a press release on December 12th that the Central Petroleum has previously announced in-house estimates of shale gas and shale oil potential in some of its application areas in the Southern Georgina Basin as being up to approximately 80 TCFG UGIIP and up to 650 MMbblsUOIIP. (SPE “high” estimate undiscovered gas and oil initially in place respectively.)

Lead A has possible estimated resources of approximately 432,000,000 barrels of oil.
Lead B has possible estimated resources of approximately 414,000,000 barrels of oil.
Lead C has possible estimated resources of approximately 112,000,000 barrels of oil.
Lead D has possible estimated resources of approximately 67,000,000 barrels of oil.

If the four wells are successful, the operator (Baraka Petroleum Limited) plans to carry out a $44.8 million 20-well exploration drilling program.

Georgina basin page at Minerals and Energy - Northern Territory Geological Survey

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