Outback Australia May Be Hiding Next 'Ferrari of Shale'
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/outback_australia_may_be_hiding_next_ferrari_of_shale-02-may-2019-158741-article/May 02, 2019
In a corner of outback Australia, a drilling crew will soon try tapping shale rocks that could hold more than three times the world’s annual consumption of natural gas.
Origin Energy Ltd. plans to drill two wells later this year in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, after the local government ended a three-year ban on fracking -- the practice of extracting oil and gas from layers of shale rock deep underground. With an estimated 500 trillion cubic feet of gas, Beetaloo has been compared to famed U.S. shale regions such as Marcellus and Barnett.
But its isolated location, lack of infrastructure, and the likelihood of tough environmental opposition, make Beetaloo a highly speculative investment.
“There are some big numbers being quoted and people have to realize this is exploration,†said Mark Schubert, Origin’s head of integrated gas, noting that only some of the total reserves would be extractable.
Origin’s permit area is the size of Wales, but engineers on site are more likely to encounter crocodiles than sheep in the largely barren area. The scrubby bushland, dotted with billabongs, or water holes, would be familiar to fans of the 1986 hit movie Crocodile Dundee, which was shot partly in Kakadu National Park in the north of the territory....
