Strike Energy Limited has been selected as the successful bidder for Perth Basin block L20-3, resulting from the WA Petroleum Acreage Release 1 of 2020.
The L20-3 block is located at the southern edge of the prolific Perth Basin Permian Gas Fairway, which has yielded more than 3 trillion cubic feet of discoveries to date (including Strike’s West Erregulla gas discovery).
The block is flanked by gas discoveries, with the Permian Beharra Springs complex and West Erregulla fields to the North, the Permian Woodada field to the West and the Ocean Hill Jurassic wet gas discovery to the East.
The block is also ideally situated from an infrastructure perspective, with both the Parmelia Gas Pipeline and the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline, running adjacent to either side of the block.
Moreover, in the South West of the block, industrial gas user, Illuka Resources, operates its Eneabba mineral sands and rare earths mine, which Strike notes may provide a nearby energy customer for any successful discovery.
The permit sits within the area of land that was the centre of the Yamatji Nation Indigenous Land Use Agreement, and as such will be progressed straight to exploration permit award without the need to secure a Native Title Agreement over the area.
L20-3 Block Prospectivity
The L20-3 block is situated south of the Abrolhos Transfer zone, to the East and downdip of the Woodada gas field and to the West and updip of the Coomallo Trough (in which the large Ocean Hill gas discovery is nested).
Strike highlights that correlation of the Permian section from the Woodada field into L20-3 is compelling and suggests a trap is present within a large horst block on the east part of the Cadda Terrace, just West of the Coomallo Fault.
Eneabba Deep is the primary target within the block and has significant potential for stacked, Permian-aged reservoirs (Kingia, High-Cliff, Beekeeper / Wagina and Dongara equivalents) hosted in structural closure.
This is analogous to the structural trapping mechanism in place in the Beharra Springs area.
Strike mapping indicates that the prospective fairway for thickened Permian reservoir sands, with porosity preservation at depth caused by syndepositional clay coatings on sand grains could extend as far South as the Cadda terrace in the L20-3 block.
Whilst the current seismic data is sparse, the company notes that Eneabba Deep could have closure in excess of 20 square kilometres. This may represent a significant gas resource should Strike’s exploration activities in the permit be successful.
Additional secondary prospectivity exists in the shallower Jurassic Cattamarra Coal Measures. Strike advises that hydrocarbons are anticipated to have migrated from the Triassic Kockatea shale in the adjacent Coomallo trough through bounding faults and into fluvio-deltaic channel sand complexes in structural closure. This is analogous to hydrocarbon migration seen in the Mt Horner oil field and the nearby Ocean Hill gas discovery.
Strike Energy Limited’s Managing Director and CEO, Stuart Nicholls, said the award of the acreage is acknowledgement of Strike’s developing position in Western Australia as a future domestic energy and fertiliser supplier.
“The addition of this block almost completes the connection of Strike’s acreage, making a contiguous landholding from North to South,” Mr Nicholls said.
“This position in the Basin is adjacent to the North/South extensional faults which provide the primary route for hydrocarbon migration across the basin’s various plays.”
“Strike looks forward to progressing further interpretation and reprocessing of data over Eneabba Deep in the immediate future, which will support an initial estimation of a potential resource size.”
