The Bedout Sub-basin, offshore Western Australia, is one of Australia’s most exciting exploration regions. The Joint Venture’s exploration strategy has the potential to unlock substantial resources in addition to the already discovered hydrocarbons with unrisked prospective resource estimates of 9 Tcf of gas and 1.6 billion barrels of liquids (Pmean, gross).

The Bedout Joint Venture holds four exploration permits, WA-435-P, WA-436-P, WA-437-P and WA-438-P, over an area encompassing over 11,000 km² and with over 80% of the exploration permits now covered by modern, high-quality 3D seismic data.

The Dorado facilities throughput is expected to have sufficient discovered liquids resources in Dorado and Pavo to fully utilise the Dorado facilities for several years. As a result, the next phase of exploration in the Bedout is intended to concentrate on unlocking additional gas resources to support the expected Phase 2 gas export development.

Within the extensive exploration acreage, five prospects have been highlighted for both their resource potential and their ability to unlock surrounding acreage – the Ara, Wallace, Wendolene, Starbuck and Pavo South prospects.

These prospects have been strategically selected for their potential to build resource scale, derisk significant prospectivity within nearby clusters and promote multiple development opportunities. The five prospects contain a combined material resource of 623mmboe, comprised of 1.52Tcf gas and 352mmbl oil.

Moreover, an additional 7.78Tcf and 1.25Bbbl (Pmean, gross) is estimated to be present in the exploration clusters delineated for tieback potential. This highlights the exceptional amount of identified exploration upside within Carnarvon’s exploration acreage, with such scale making it one of the most prospective exploration portfolios in Australia.