Carnarvon Petroleum Limited has completed an assessment of the hydrocarbon volumes within their Dorado structure, which is located off the coast of Western Australia.

Carnarvon has announced that approximately 171 million barrels of oil were discovered in Dorado, making it one of the largest oil resources ever found on the North West Shelf.  Oil fields of this scale are not often found- it has been more than 30 years since the last large field discovery on the North West Shelf. Carnarvon has stated that it is common for additional resources to be discovered in the surrounding area.

“The gas and condensate discovered in the Phoenix Project is also a significant and valuable resource that is in addition to the discovered oil. Dorado discovered 552 billion cubic feet of gas and 16 million barrels of condensate on a 2C basis. When combined with the nearby Roc field, the aggregate resource is around 884 billion cubic feet of gas and 36 million barrels of associated condensate on a gross 2C basis,” said Carnarvon’s Managing Director and CEO, Adrian Cook, earlier this morning.

“These volumetric results reiterate the significance of the Dorado discovery and we look forward to maturing this resource and finding additional neighbouring resources in our future drilling programs,” Mr Cook added.

According to another announcement this month, the company’s near-term focus is on maturing oil, gas and condensate discovered in its Phoenix project, alongside their partner Quadrant Energy, with plans to bring oil into production from the Buffalo field.

More information is still to come on Dorado’s development, but for now, more information can be found here.