Carnarvon Petroleum today provides an update on the farm out of the Buffalo project to Advance Energy plc (‘’Advance Energy’’) and the Buffalo-10 well.

Advance Energy has, subject to shareholder approval, successfully raised the capital to acquire a 50% interest in the Buffalo project. In return Advance Energy will fund the Buffalo-10 well on a free carried basis up to a cap of US$20m. This means the drilling will be at no cost to Carnarvon unless the well costs more than US$20m.

The transaction has been approved by the government of Timor-Leste.

It is expected that the transaction will complete after Advance Energy receives shareholder approval, which is scheduled for mid-April 2021.

Carnarvon Managing Director and CEO, Mr Adrian Cook, said:
“We congratulate Advance Energy on their capital raise and welcome them to this exciting project.

The project team is well advanced in their work to drill the Buffalo-10 well in 2021. The well will be suspended so that it can be used for future production. Development plans will also be progressed this year so that it provides us with the opportunity to execute the planed operations to first oil in a short period of time.

The Buffalo project is progressing well and looks to be positioned for a window in time where there are now forecasts of shortages of quality oil from projects like Buffalo”.

About Buffalo Redevelopment Project

Carnarvon was awarded the WA-523-P permit, which included the previously developed Buffalo field, in May 2016 for an initial six-year term. The Field was discovered by BHP in 1996 and subsequently developed using four wells drilled from a small, unmanned wellhead platform installed in 25 metres water depth, tied back to an FPSO. Production commenced in December 1999 at production rates up to approximately 50,000 stb/d and terminated in November 2004 after the production of 20.5 MMstb of highly-undersaturated, light oil (53°API) from the Jurassic-age Elang Formation. All existing facilities and wells were decommissioned and removed prior to Carnarvon being awarded the permit.

Carnarvon initially focussed its technical work on reprocessing of the 3D seismic dataset using state-of-the-art full waveform inversion (FWI) technology. This work supports the interpretation of a significant attic oil accumulation remaining after the original development, based on sub-optimal positioning of early wells using poorly processed seismic data. Reservoir modelling has been conducted using the latest structural interpretation and available well data, including an extensive history-matching effort to calibrate model/well performance to production rates and water-cut development (governed by strong aquifer drive) observed during the original production period.

Based on this work, independently audited volumetric estimates of contingent resources in the Buffalo oil field are 31.1 million barrels (2C) with low estimates of 15.3 million barrels (1C) and high estimates of 47.8 million barrels (3C) - Refer to Carnarvon Petroleum’s ASX announcement on 28 August 2017.

KeyFacts Energy: Carnarvon Petroleum Australia country profile