journo's articles

Witht the exception of the couple of lines on PEP 151, all the other info is a cut and paste, the authors named and dates and origin of articles provided. Even the notes on PEP 152 can be verified.

Old news, yes. But still relevant.

PEP 151

Shares January 2002. It could contain 40-million barrels of oil, which could be worth more than $5.00 per share to EPR.

Descartes (offshore)

From The Age:

Garimpeiro
September 24 2002
By Barry FitzGerald

Essential has fingers crossed as new moves end waiting game

Albert Road-based Essential Petroleum has given its shareholders a good run since its listing a couple of years back on its position of strength - for a junior - in the oil and gas potential of the onshore/offshore Otway Basin.

The stock price has traded as low as 12.5 cents and as high as 29 cents as the news from the group's exploration efforts in the Otway and those of others have ebbed and flowed in the period.

But all along, Essential has been playing a waiting game, one that looked to test the big oil potential of the offshore Otway Basin as distinct from the more recent successes with gas, both onshore and offshore.

Essential's chief executive, John Remfry, and its exploration director, Roger Blake, freely admit it is only after the recent grant of some offshore permit ground that they can finally test their big oil hopes.

These hopes are based on the same type of turbidite stratigraphic sand plays that have been producing the big oil results off the continental shelf of Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and the west coast of Africa, including the latest Woodside/Hardman discovery off Mauritania.
Essential's in-house technical knowledge of the turbidite play dates back to the original deepwater success enjoyed by the state-owned oil company in Brazil in the mid-1980s, itself a product of young Brazilians being sent off to Texas for their geological grounding.

Now that Essential has picked up its preferred offshore permits in the offshore Otway Basin it is happy to reveal that its model is pointing to one of its targets (Descartes) possibly containing up to 2.2 billion barrels of oil, such is the nature of these stratigraphic plays. That is in addition to the standard structural plays that have been producing the promising gas discoveries by Woodside, Santos and others on the continental shelf.

It is big talk for a company that was yesterday trading at 18 cents a share for a market value of some $12.2 million. Such is the nature of the oil business. Essential is now looking for a friendly big brother to drill its target, maybe late next year. Expect plenty of takers.

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EPR: “The Portland Trough, which contains the Pebble Point petroleum system, is expected to be the source of oil in the onshore Otway Basin. Exploration in this region has been sparse because the Pebble Point petroleum system has only recently been delineated and understood.”

Drilling back in 60's found oil off Lighthouse Point, but was considered uncommercial at the time. With better seismics and understanding of the geology, it should prove commercial.
Zeroing in on the Otway's oily secretsAuthor: Ian HowarthDate: 01/10/2002Words: 1113Publication: Australian Financial ReviewSection: Companies And MarketsPage: 51
According to theory and now results Australia's Otway Basin offers rich drilling, writes Ian Howarth. Four significant offshore gas discoveries in Victoria's Otway Basin and a near-perfect success rate with exploration drilling have attracted Australia's biggest oil and gas explorers, and some from overseas. The Otway Basin, which actually straddles the Victorian-South Australian border and stretches into the Southern Ocean, is poised to challenge Bass Strait and SA's Cooper Basin for a big slice of south-east Australia's rapidly growing gas market. If the new breed of Otway Basin explorers has its way, the region could generate major oil discoveries too. And with new interstate gas pipelines snaking around the country, it will soon supply Tasmania and NSW as well, making Victoria an important gas hub. The chance of major oil discoveries in the offshore Otway is enticing prospectors who, armed with new technology such as three-dimensional seismic surveys and amplitude and velocity anomaly techniques, believe they are zeroing in on its buried secrets. Three decades ago Exxon, Shell and BP were all attracted to the Otway, backed by the theory that oil and gas tend to be found where they have already been found. The early explorers felt that BHP and Esso's stunning successes in Bass Strait were likely to be repeated in the Otway, from Port Campbell in Victoria to Mt Gambier in SA. Sporadic drilling in the 1960s and 1970s found no commercial oil or gas and interest in the area waned until the 1980s, when Cultus petroleum hired Brazilian geologist Victor Dauzacker to have another look. Dauzacker, now an Australian citizen, was one of numerous bright young Brazilians sent off by state-owned oil company Petrobras to study geology in Texas under the best oil men in the business. He developed a theory that the Otway was identical to the highly productive giant rift basins in northern Brazil and those dotting West Africa's Atlantic coast. He reasoned that it bore striking similarities to the massive Campos Basin, which has produced billions of barrels of oil for Brazil and boasts almost 200 offshore production platforms. Cultus chief executive Don Beard and Dauzacker spent several years accumulating a big parcel of Otway acreage both onshore and offshore for Cultus with a view to testing at least one major offshore play for oil. But the markets intervened; Cultus was taken over before Dauzacker's big play, called Leblon, after the fashionable Rio de Janiero suburb where he now lives, could be drilled. ``The Leblon geological play type has been several times tested along with three major Brazilian basins Campos, Espirito Santo and Santos," Dauzacker told The Australian Financial Review. ``Several billion barrels have been found and it is presently responsible for more than 80per cent of Brazilian production of more than 1.5million barrels a day." Melbourne-based petroleum explorer Essential Petroleum is continuing where Cultus left off, convinced, as Dauzacker is, that the offshore Otway has strong potential for oil fields in addition to the now proven gas reserves. The common thread potentially linking the Otway and the classic Atlantic rift basins along the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa is the existence of vast stratigraphic turbidite sand plays which have produced some of the world's biggest oil fields. The Atlantic basin formed when the African and South American continents drifted apart. Vast eroding canyons formed at points along the edges of the continental shelf, dumping sand, which spread out. Those sands were subsequently buried. Later they filled with oil and gas, providing a bounty today on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Woodside Petroleum and partner Hardman Resources last week found about 100million barrels of oil and several trillion cubic feet of gas in just such a prospect off the coast of Mauritania in West Africa. Essential Petroleum's managing director, John Remfry, and his partner, Roger Blake, reckon Dauzacker got it right when he produced his Otway rift basin theory. They have just acquired a major offshore Otway Basin permit containing a large sand prospect called Descartes. Essential has kept pretty quiet about Descartes because it stretches well across the old permit boundary into the newly acquired offshore permit and the company now controls the entire feature. Interest in the Otway Basin, particularly offshore, was reflected in strong bidding for three offshore permits the Victorian Government awarded last month. The three areas attracted total exploration work programs valued at $150million over six years the biggest response yet to a package of Otway acreage. Permits were granted to Essential, Santos, Inpex Alpha of Japan and Unocal of the United States. Victoria's Resources Minister, Candy Broad, said: ``Last year's discoveries in the Otway Basin ... introduced significant new supply options, stimulated exploration interest and boosted both the developing gas market and regional supply security. ``Clearly, the new gas fields and proposed supporting infrastructure have led to what has been the most enthusiastic bid response in the region for a very long time." Last week Santos and unlisted exploration junior Strike Oil gave the Otway Basin another boost with the Casino gas discovery off the Warrnambool coast. The partners have opted to drill a second well on the discovery which contains about 300billion cubic feet of gas in a bid to prove its reserves and move towards early development. Any gas found in the Otway Basin, which is close to shore, will quickly find a home in the growing south-east Australian market. Origin Energy and TXU recently joined forces to build an interstate gas pipeline stretching from Port Campbell in Victoria to Adelaide, where it will supplement the SA capital's supply from the Santos-dominated Cooper Basin. Although the Cooper Basin still contains a large volume of gas, it is becoming increasingly expensive to extract, which is making openings for additional suppliers. Late last year and early this year Beach Petroleum made a string of small onshore gas discoveries, all of which have been quickly brought into production. And Essential Petroleum has made history in the past week by producing a gas flow from its Port Fairy 1 onshore exploration well. Although small, the flow has confirmed the existence of gas in what previously had been a barren zone between Warrnambool and the region near the SA border. This opens up yet another string of natural gas possibilities in the Otway Basin. The Otway's natural advantage is that it lies in an area which is under-supplied with gas and which is close to the comparatively cool-climate big markets centred on Melbourne and Adelaide, where gas is a premium heating fuel. The Otway Basin?s natural advantage is that it lies in an area under-supplied with gas, has a cool climate that makes gas a premium heating fuel, and is close to big markets in Melbourne and Adelaide. Recent Otway Basin gas discoveries Discovery Date of size of field discoveryMinerva 400bn cf Mid 1993Geographe/Thylacine 800bn cf May-June 2001Casino 300-1000bn cf Sep-02cf: cubic feet