Carnarvon Petroleum (ASX:CVN) has some wholly-owned interests on Western Australia's North West Shelf, along with some joint ventures.
The Buffalo project is one that Carnarvon 100% owns, and is known as WA-523-P exploration permit, after acquiring the it a year ago by committing to undertake a work program that included the reprocessing the existing 3D seismic data.
The permit is in a proven petroleum system containing the Buffalo oil field that was producing around 4,000 barrels of oil per day when it was shut in.
The permit also contains two proven but undeveloped oil pools at Bluff-1 and Buller-1.
There are also significant oil fields within permits adjoining WA-523-P including the 200 million barrel Laminaria-Corallina field.
Plans for Buffalo
Carnarvon secured the Buffalo project with the objective of:
1. Applying new technology, including Full Wave Inversion processing, to determine if it could overcome historic seismic imaging challenges that severely compromised the legacy oil field development and exploration efforts; and
2. If successful, use the improved data to identify new oil targets in this proven and prolific oil field region.
The reprocessing has recently been completed with impressive improvements in data quality.
Carnarvon said that the resulting data produces a significantly clearer definition of the key zones relevant for prospect identification.
Next steps
Carnarvon recently commenced interpreting the data to more accurately map the Buffalo field and the two discoveries at Bluff-1 and Buller-1.
This work will extend to other undrilled structures in the permit to mature a portfolio of targets for further assessment.
Once this work has been completed, and provided it supports prospective targets warranting drilling, Carnarvon will then seek a partner or partners to participate in the drilling activities.