News

January 21, 2010

Central Petroleum’s First Coal Seam Gas Well Of 2010 Finds A Thicker-Than-Expected Coal Section

Central Petroleum has got the New Year off to a good start with its five-well campaign in the under-explored emptiness of Australia’s Northern Territory delivering an early discovery. The ASX-quoted company is exploring the coal seam gas (CSG) potential of the little-drilled Pedirka Basin, southeast of Alice Springs in central Australia, which it hopes will yield the kind of resource to justify development in this remote region and attract the kind of investor buzz that CSG plays elsewhere in Australia have generated. Central is the operator with a 70 per cent interest alongside Petroleum Exploration Australia (20 per cent) and Red Sky Energy (10 per cent).

The first well in the campaign has been classed as a coal discovery, with the well encountering 144 metres of coal with each seam being more than one metre thick.  This was better than anticipated.  The well was drilled nine kilometres updip of an earlier well, drilled in 2008, that found 143 metres of coal.  This seems to point to a possibly significant coal resource, which seismic appears to show is widespread in this area. Initial gas desorption results varied from fair to...