Australia’s Explorers Step Up Hunt for Oil After Big Find

With just 58 days worth of annual oil imports as at June 2019, Australia is the only member of the International Energy Agency that has not stockpiled 90 days of oil.

OILMONSTER.COM- Australia’s oil exploration has picked up over the past year following the country’s biggest find in more than two decades, and could drive a resurgence in production that has fallen to a near 50-year low.

A successful hunt for liquids could eventually beef up fuel security in Australia, which relies on imports for most of its oil needs, and whose vulnerability was highlighted after attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities last month.

With just 58 days worth of annual oil imports as at June 2019, Australia is the only member of the International Energy Agency that has not stockpiled 90 days of oil.

Exploration spending rose 30% to A$1.3 billion ($880 million) in the year to June 2019 following a decade of decline, the Department of Industry said this week in its latest quarterly report. The slump was aggravated by the oil price crash in 2014.

In a sharp reversal, spending rose 20% in the June quarter alone to A$378 million from the same quarter last year.

Several companies grabbed acreage in waters off Western Australia last year after Quadrant Energy, now owned by Santos Ltd, struck oil in the Dorado field, Australia’s biggest oil find since 1996.

“In light of Dorado, other blocks were picked up. There’s a lot of activity in that area,” said Merrie-Ellen Gunning, offshore energy systems section leader at government agency Geoscience Australia.

 Courtesy: www.reuters.com