Canning Basin
ARC considerably enhanced its exploration portfolio in May 2006 by securing a significant regional holding in the onshore Canning Basin in Australia’s north-west.
ARC holds a dominant acreage position in this vast, high potential area—the least-explored Paleozoic basin in the world, and one which shows geological similarities with highly productive regions in Oman and the USA.
The Canning Basin’s exploration areas are ideally suited to ARC’s disciplined approach and successful business model of high equities, permit operatorship, aggressive technically-driven exploration, and the fast-track development of oil and gas reserves.
There has also been no previous systematic exploration for gas in the Canning Basin despite numerous gas recoveries. ARC plans to capitalise on this high potential, particularly in the current climate of strong market demand at a critical point in the WA gas supply cycle, which has seen WA gas prices rise to more than double that of the east coast, and it has entered into an innovative sales contract with Alcoa of Australia for the development of any gas it discovers.
Sustained high oil mean any oil discovery will be able to be quickly commercialised.
ARC commenced a major exploration program in the area in August 2007 which will extend over a three-year period—the largest frontier/immature basin exploration program undertaken in WA in the last 30 years.
