oip management top notch and brw article

MD Barry Smith is bullish on Willaroo (see article below). He's no slouch in terms of professional background .. so I would take his assessment seriously. Here's an extract from his profile on the OIP website:

"From 1991 to 1999 he was Exploration and New Venture Manager at Command Petroleum Limited and Cairn Energy plc where he was involved in several oil discoveries and the acquisition of prospective acreage and interests in India and Yemen. From 2000 until recently he was Exploration Manager at Mosaic Oil NL where he was instrumental in the discovery of several oil and gas fields and was involved in developing these assets to the production stage. He is currently NSW President of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia and also an active member of SEG (Society of Exploration Geophysicists), AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) and ASEG (Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists)."


Here's the BRW article from 24 April posted on OIP's website. Smith is quoted as saying "We believe Willaroo-1 has the potential to be one of the most significant wells drilled in the state,".

BRW
Report: Tony Blackie
BRW | 24 Apr 2008 | Page: 75 | The Business End
Northern New South Wales is not noted as an oil-bearing region. But all that may be about to
change if an oil minnow has its way.
Despite all the technology available, finding oil is still very much a hit or miss process.
Barry Smith is a petroleum geophysicist with more than 30 years' experience who appears to have a
nose for sniffing out hydrocarbons, having racked up a good success rate in oil and gas finds in
Australia and overseas.
Now at the helm of a freshly cashed up company, ¿Orion Petroleum, he has set his sights on northern
New South Wales where no other explorers have dared to tread. Smith is betting that the Darling
Basin area around the Queensland and NSW border is hiding substantial quantities of oil and gas.
Orion, an offshoot of Eastern Star Gas, listed in December after a $23 million capital raising. The
company has existing oil and gas drill sites in northern NSW in the Surat and Bowen basins, which
have already provided coal-seam methane.
Smith's team is expected to commence drilling by the end of April on Orion's exploration well
Willaroo-1 in the north of the state. He says the site has a potential to delivery 40 million barrels of
oil and an estimated 155 billion cubic feet of gas.
He is optimistic about the outcome of the venture after seismic tests suggested the presence of
hydrocarbons in both of Orion's primary sites.
"We believe Willaroo-1 has the potential to be one of the most significant wells drilled in the state,"
Smith says. "Not only will it kick-start Orion's two-year exploration program but a commercial
discovery at Willaroo will represent the largest indigenous supply of hydrocarbons in NSW. While the
Surat-Bowen Basin is a proven and extremely important hydrocarbon province in Queensland, the
basin is relatively unexplored south of the border. There is a compelling case driving our drilling
program in NSW, with Willaroo-1 located immediately north of proven gas reserves near Narrabri."
Smith, who is NSW president of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia and a member of the
Society of Exploration Geophysicists, says the drilling will target two primary reservoirs at a total
depth of 2000 metres. The two-week drilling program will cut through Jurassic and Permian-aged
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Darling spuds of maybe
Report: Tony Blackie
Subject to Copyright. See Copyright information at the end of this article.
reservoirs of natural resources.
Work on Orion's second well, Nyngynderry-1, will start in early June with the first comprehensive test
of a hydrocarbon prospect in the Darling Basin region of northern NSW.
Nothing is guaranteed in the oil and gas exploration industry and Smith acknowledges there is about
25 per cent chance of success. "Nobody has been exploring in this area and we have access to the
oil rigs," he says. "All it needed was an injection of capital to get in."
Orion's licence also allows for coal-seam gas exploration and the company may also drill on one or
two coal-seam opportunities in the area. A significant find is also likely to provide local job
opportunities as substantial infrastructure will need to be provided.
Smith notes the Moomba pipeline cuts through Orion's leases, which would make a gas find easier to
transport.

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