TRANSCRIPTION OF FINANCE NEWS NETWORK INTERVIEW WITH CENTRAL PETROLEUM LIMITED (ASX:CTP) MANAGING DIRECTOR, JOHN HEUGHNicholas Hayes: Hello Nicholas Hayes for Finance News Network. Joining me from gas and oil explorer Central Petroleum Limited
(ASX:CTP) is Managing Director, John Heugh. John welcome back.
John Heugh: Thanks Nick.
Nicholas Hayes: For viewers not familiar with your stock, can you briefly introduce the company?
John Heugh: Sure, the company actually started in 1997 Nick. It was a long range plan to acquire more or less a big land bank in central Australia and prospective acreage. So we started in 1997 when oil was trading at $10 or $12 a barrel and we’ve been able to put together a very large mass of prospective land since then. And finally we listed in 2006.
Nicholas Hayes: Thanks John. So what can you tell us about the oil and gas potential of central Australia?
John Heugh: Sure. Harking back to 2005, the Northern Territory Geographical Survey published a report that said that there was 6 billion barrels of oil, yet to find oil equivalent that is, in just one basin, the Amadeus. Since then with the advent of unconventional potential being developed around the world, we’ve had independent reports on some of our acreage as having P50 prospective recoverable oil of 5 billion barrels. And round about 40 TCF of gas in addition to those conventional numbers. So the area is very undeveloped, it’s very under explored with an average well density of 1 well every 5,000 square kilometres. So it’s got a tremendous potential.
Nicholas Hayes: And being onshore, costs will no doubt be much lower than offshore production. How important is this for the development of oil and gas in the centre?
John Heugh: Well it is very important because there’re a lot of things to balance out here. Seismic costs more onshore but drilling costs are only a fraction of what they spend offshore. So that’s very important to balance the longer distance from the markets that we do have to endure in central Australia.
Nicholas Hayes: Very good and so how long have you been listed and what’s your market cap?
John Heugh: Sure, market cap today is $70 million; I believe this company is dramatically undervalued. We listed in 2006 and since then we’ve drilled 5 conventional wells and 9 coal wells.
Nicholas Hayes: You operate in a number of basins in central Australia spanning the Northern Territory, parts of Queensland and South Australia. Can you talk about each and your prospects starting with the Amadeus Basin?
John Heugh: Sure, the Amadeus is a very old basin; the geology is very similar to the basins in Oman, the Sichuan Basin in China and the Eastern Siberian Platform. So there’re a lot of salt structures, a lot of sub-salt structures which remain totally undeveloped and unexplored at this stage in the Amadeus Basin. The main producing horizon is in the Ordovician and two major fields were discovered there without seismic, dating back to the mid 1960’s.
So initially our focus is on those younger Ordovician rocks. We have had two very good oil shows at Surprise and Johnstone, and we need to go back and re-enter Surprise later this year. In fact we hope to go back to drilling within four to five weeks.
Nicholas Hayes: Pedirka Basin?
John Heugh: Pedirka Basin is almost a lookalike to the Cooper Basin. It’s got an older Permian Basin underlain by Devonian carbonates in which we’ve identified, we believe, several very important reef carbonate plays. And then we’ve got the Triassic Jurassic Eromanga Basin over the top, which basically straddles both the Cooper and the Perdika Permian. So in effect, we’ve really got a second look-a-like Cooper Basin which we believe should be just as prospective, although it’s a little bit smaller than the Cooper Basin.
Nicholas Hayes: And the Georgina Basin?
John Heugh: The Georgina is where a lot of focus has been directed lately due to the tremendous success of companies like PetroFrontier and Rodinia. PetroFrontier are in the middle of drilling the first ever horizontal multi-stage fract well , looking for unconventional oil in the southern Georgina Basin and that’s really a pioneering move and we wish them every success.
That particular basin, however, was described by a Russian group of consultants as having expelled from the source rocks there, over 40 billion tonnes of oil. There’ve been 23 wells drilled to date and 13 of those have had live bleeding oil shows. So we think that basin’s got tremendous potential.
Nicholas Hayes: Good so all up John, what is the size of your targets in terms of barrels of oil equivalent?
John Heugh: As I said before, we’re looking at 5 billion barrels at P50 recoverable, unconventional oil, round about 40 TCF unconventional gas.
We’re looking at initially in the first round prospects that we worked up ready for drilling, we’re looking at about 3 billion barrels of oil at P50 and approximately 7 TCF of gas in place.
In addition to that we have an 11 million acre package in the southern Wiso Basin - the Lander Trough which independent experts believe is wholly within the oil window. So that should add a lot of interest to that package and we haven’t talked about coal yet either.
Nicholas Hayes: And you also have a helium resource. How much do you have and is it commercially viable?
John Heugh: The helium play has been drilled. It’s a sub-salt play, sub-Gillen salt member in the Amadeus Basin. It’s been drilled only once before and produced gas condensate and helium at 6.2% to surface. That well was Magee-1 in 1992 drilled by CRA subsidiary Pacific Oil & Gas. Now that particular play type appears to be ubiquitous throughout the basin, but most explorationists have stopped at the top of the salt layer, over the top but geophysically with seismic aeromags and so forth, interpretation is that the Heavitree formation that hosted this rich condensate gas plus helium extends throughout the whole Amadeus Basin.
The total helium resources in place could be enormous. So far we’ve only looked very seriously at one prospect at Mount Kitty and we think we could have about 100 billion cubic feet of helium in place at that particular prospect.
Nicholas Hayes: Now to corporate matters, I see you have well advanced plans to list this year on the Second Board of the Toronto Stock Exchange. How much are you looking to raise as part of this listing?
John Heugh: That’s a very good question Nick. We have outlined, publicly of course, our plans for next year to drill 6 to 8 unconventional wells, several conventional wells, additional 2D and 3D seismic. And also to perhaps buy our own drilling rig because that’s been a major problem in development at this acreage to date - getting hold of modern state of the art drilling rigs, that sum at one hundred percent level would equate to $100 million.
Now how much of that we intend raising to accompany the listing is a question I can’t really answer. It depends upon the success of the drilling programme this year, it depends upon market conditions, it depends upon the structure and dynamics of the listing process itself. And last but not least, it depends very heavily on how much funding is contributed by farm in partners.
Nicholas Hayes: Good and where will the funds go?
John Heugh: Well the funds will go, as I’ve outlined on unconventional drilling, conventional drilling, regional and 3D seismic particularly over the Surprise area and the probable purchase of a modern, state of the art, highly mobile drilling rig.
Nicholas Hayes: And what is the significance apart from the capital raising and dual listing on the TSX?
John Heugh: Well the capital can be raised anywhere, but the main significance of listing on the TSXV is because basically the Canadian investor market is about five times bigger than the ASX in terms of resources and energy. So if we complete a dual listing, we have the same number of shares distributed over a market that’s five times bigger. Surely it must make capital raising easier and it must be very beneficial for all shareholders involved.
Nicholas Hayes: Last question John. What is the long term strategy for Central Petroleum?
John Heugh: Well look, I’ll start with the short term strategy if you don’t mind. We’re focused on liquids production, crude oil production, discovery and production for early cash flow. Intermediate cash flow we think could come from helium. Longer term cash flow from gas into value adding processes such as GTL or LNG and finally with coal, we have several avenues there.
We’ve got mining and beneficiation of coal for export in bulk tonnages. We have coal to liquids by mining and conversion on the surface into Fischer-Tropsch liquids. And we also have a major programme that we’ve planned, to produce 60,000 barrels a day initially of ultra clean transport fuel from UCG processes in some of the deeper coals.
Part of the process will involve significant joint ventures; we don’t want to operate the coal monetisation. We brought in partners such as Allied Resource Partners; we’re in discussion with some Chinese and Indian groups to do the same. To basically take these various projects available in coal through to the bankable feasibility and project finance stage. We’ll retain a big chunk but those other people will operate and manage the monetisation of the coal, leaving us free to focus on liquids and gas into liquid products.
Nicholas Hayes: John Heugh thanks for the update.
John Heugh: You’re most welcome Nick.
ENDS
