Carnarvon Petroleum Ltd (ASX:CVN) wholly-owns the Buffalo project, which is located in Australia’s most prolific oil and gas region, the North West Shelf in Western Australia.
Carnarvon has now revealed that the Buffalo field contains a best estimate resource (2C) of 31 million barrels of light premium oil.
The importance of the resource is that it has a revenue generating capacity of circa US$1.5 billion for Carnarvon, priced at current oil prices.
There is a range of options to redevelop the field and scoping studies show that the redevelopment of the Buffalo oil field is economic at current oil prices; even at the 1C outcome.
This indicates the project to be low risk.
Carnarvon noted that this gives the company confidence to advance the project immediately.
Adrian Cook, managing director and chief executive officer, commented: "A great deal of work has gone into de-risking the Buffalo project.
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"This included engaging independent experts to cross check a significant proportion our work in order to give us the highest possible level of confidence in the remaining oil recoverable from this field.
"The next steps will focus on the field redevelopment and include securing a production licence and associated approvals, advancing redevelopment plans and supplier commitments and finalising funding for the redevelopment activities.
"While significant work is still required, we are incredibly encouraged by the
potential and are pushing forward with the view to bringing the Buffalo field into production."
Next steps is reserves
Upgrading these contingent resources to reserves requires a commitment to develop, encompassing a field development plan and a production license across the Buffalo field.
Work on both of these is underway and will form the basis for the next series of project updates.