und Leiter Christopher Moyes, sein Wissen beruht auf langjährige Erfahrung.
Christopher P. Moyes - President E-Mail: cmoyes@moyesco.com Chris holds a BSc (1968) in geology & biology from Western Australia and earned an MSc in petroleum engineering from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, London University in 1974.He joined West Australian Petroleum Pty. Ltd. from 1968 through 1972, working in regional and development geology on Barrow island, Dongara gas field and drilling pograms in the Canning and Carnarvon & Perth basins.Chris was from 1975 a member of the senior management of Gaffney Cline & Associates, inc. a leading international petroleum advisory firm, during which time he was resident in London Singapore and Washington DC. His responsibilities included technical evaluation, reserves and field development studies, Fair Market Valuation of exploration licenses including significant holdings in Australia, the MacKenzie Delta and international portfolio's, unitization, new product market studies. From 1975, he held senior management positions in various regions and was president of the US company through 1983.In 1982, Mr. Moyes founded the current Group in Texas to manage oil and gas transactions and other energy investments.Chris has presented a series of seminars on economics and risk assessment to the newly emerging national oil company in the Peoples Republic of China under mandate from the United Nations and has presented seminars on international petroleum terms to national oil company staf from the FSU and China.He has advised and managed the placement of funds in exploration and production ventures in the U.S. and international, the evaluation of production in properties for acquisition and investment opportunities. Chris advises on new company issues, including teh support in the international markets for capital and identified and acquired assets for these companies, and developed technical and contractual aspects of public documents.Chris has provided the commercial foundation through economic models for unitization of large fields, for frontier terms with governments and for large scale infrastructure including cross border transportation. His work has involved the integration of financing structures, costs and collateral for thinly capitalized projects, providing an additional safety net for clients in negotiating aligned contractual relationships.From 1998 through 1993, he jointly developed the economic model, EdgeCa$h addressing international petroleum fiscal terms and evaluation on a stardard platform. The rights to the EdgeCa$h model, which addressed the industry needs for evaluation of most international fiscal terms, was sold to LandMark Graphics, a leading software company specializing in oil and gas systems.Chris has managed for fifteen years the ongoing development of moyesco.com which includes comprehensive summaries on industry activity, purchase, sale and merger transactions, financial commitments, exploration, farm-outs and relinquishment of obligations. The database is integral to the Firm's core business in the identification of oprtunties and provision of Fair Market Values and financing.Chris has thirty years experience in the energy sector and has published a number of papers on petroleum legislation, exploration, and project financing and provides advice and management of, client and joint venture operations, investment programs, technical and business aspects of exploration and production contracts, joint venture and farm-in arrangements.He is a current member of the SPE for which group he was the founding Singapore member, the AAPG, and the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators. Chris is an SPE Distinguished Lecturer on International Petroleum Finance, 1996-1997 and has made presentations in several countries addressing International Petroleum Finance, the Source and Cost of Capital.
http://www.spoke.com/info/p4JANCd/ChristopherMoyes
A small Colorado independent believes the 7 million acres
it has under license in the heart of the Australian Outback
could very well be the world’s next gargantuan unconventional
oil and gas play.
“This is a huge resource,” consultant Chris Moyes said of
the Falcon Oil & Gas holdings in the vast Beetaloo Basin
of the Northern Territory. “It is the biggest unconventional
resource we know outside of North America. It certainly is
of the same class as Gorgon and potentially bigger.”
That, indeed, is saying something considering the
Chevron Gorgon liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) project at
Barrow Island on the Northwest Shelf is widely touted as
one of the world’s largest-ever production ventures. When
combined with existing developments and some 11 proposed
greenfield projects, Gorgon will play a key role in
Australia’s objective of overtaking Qatar as the world’s top
LNG exporter and possibly help reverse its declining oil
production.
As Gorgon dominates most of the news coming out of
Australia of late, Falcon is quietly going about seeking
strategic partners for a prospect that Moyes said will be a
“100-year project.” “It will take a long time to fully exploit
a resource of this size and type,” he said.
Falcon is very optimistic about the project’s potential,
particularly because it may hold almost 20 billion bbl of
oil and 64 Tcf of recoverable gas and is located within a
ready-made infrastructure and on the doorstep of one of
the world’s biggest markets (Fig. 1). “We are very excited
about the activity that is going on in the Beetaloo Basin,”
said Falcon board member Steve Shultz. “We think it has
the potential to be a very big part of the Falcon portfolio .”
Reservoir evaluation consultancy Ryder Scott conducted
an independent analysis of the Falcon Beetaloo holdings
and determined the prospect could contain 19.1 billion bbl
of oil and 63.9 Tcf of gas. Those estimates were classified
as “unrisked prospective resource best estimates,” which
for undrilled prospects typically is generated by integrating
seismic interpretation with regional geologic data and taking
into account a number of geological risk factors. Those
include the trap risk, source risk, and reservoir risk, which
Ryder Scott defines as “the probability that a lithology
exists with sufficient porosity, permeability, and continuity
to contain moveable hydrocarbons.” Moyes said as much as
80% of the Beetaloo resource base is unconventional tight
gas and oil.
More Seismic Needed
The Beetaloo, however, has not been entirely undrilled.
Between 1989 and 1998, Pacific Oil and Gas drilled 11
wells, all of which showed the presence of oil and gas.
Most of those earlier wells were drilled as part of a mining
program. “They were looking for minerals, but of
course, they got oil and gas shows and began to think of
it as an oil and gas play,” said Moyes, president of Moyes
and Company, upstream technical and transaction advisers
assisting Falcon in securing prospective partners.
Last year, Falcon acquired a 75% operatorship of the
property from PetroHunter, which holds the remaining
25% interest. The company currently is re-entering the
Shenandoah No. 1, which PetroHunter drilled to 5,102 ft
(1555 m) in 2007, with an extended planned depth of
10,662 ft (3250 m) in an attempt to test the intervals overlaying
the Lower Bessie Creek formation (Fig 2). At least
one more well is planned for next year.
The Beetaloo, which is a part of the larger MacArthur
Basin, is a Pre-Cambrian basin approximately 373 miles
(600 km) south of Darwin. The basin holds more than
9,843 ft (3000 m) of sediment column in which two
world-class source rocks have been identified—the oil- and
gas-generating Kyalla shale and the gas-dominant Velkerri
shale. The main hydrocarbon plays in this large basin are
in the shale reservoirs and adjacent sandstones with each
source rock widespread and up to 2,625 ft (800 m) thick.
While more than 1,243 miles (2000 km) of 2D seismic has
been shot over the structure, Moyes said more is definitely
needed to fully access the true potential of the prospect.
“There is only a limited amount of seismic over the entire
basin. There certainly is a need for several thousand more
kilometers across the core area. For example, on the western
side there is a large fault system that we do not understand
that well because we do not have any seismic. There
has been a great deal of tectonic activity there, so clearly
this is an area of interest,” Moyes said.
What is known, he said, is that the massive structure is
highlighted with six producible sandstone reservoirs with
average thickness that ranges from approximately 33 ft
(10 m) in the Hayfield to more than 984 ft (300 m) in the
Lower Bessie Creek. The Beetaloo also is somewhat unusual,
he added, in that the unconventional and conventional
sediments tend to overlap.
“Kyallia has been drilled several times, but what we have
to do now is drill through these other lithologies, core
them, and then take samples under pressure,” Moyes said.
“We need to look at how much oil and gas are contained
and how much of it is moveable and can be recovered.”
The ideal program would be to drill at least three to six
wells a year, Moyes said. “This prospect will attract the larger
operators, who have a strong export market in southeast
Asia. It is hard to ignore nearly 20 billion bbl and 60 Tcf of
potential recoverable reserves, especially with the majority
of the world’s population next door. The Northwest
Territory government also is one of the [business] friendliest
in the world and is very pro-resource development.”
The Beetaloo, he said, is similar to the US Barnett and
Haynesville shale plays in their infancy. “We definitely
know the resources are there, but what we do not know
exactly is how to get commercial flow rates. We are very
much on a learning curve much like the Barnett shale,
which we now clearly understand. In the early days of
the Barnett, we were happy to produce 200,000 cubic feet
a day and now they are getting 5 to 6 million cubic feet
per day”
He added the Beetaloo also is unlike most of the unconventional
plays in Australia in that with two pipelines and
a railway network already in operation, early production
definitely is feasible. “This play is very unusual in that if the
appraisal and development works out, there is a big potential
for early production. Anywhere else in Australia, you’d
have to think about putting in a pipeline system.”
LNG Still On Top
The Gorgon LNG project continues to steal the show Down
Under with Chevron and partners ExxonMobil and Shell
deciding to finally proceed with the estimated USD 43-billion
project (Fig. 3). The announcement came after the
consortium secured long-term sales contracts to provide up
to 3 million tons per annum (t/a) of LNG to energy clients
in Korea and Japan with first shipments expected in 2014.
A 20-year LNG sales contract with PetroChina alone is valued
at approximately USD 41 billion, according to reports.
Gorgon also will capture and store thousands of tons of
carbon dioxide generated by the operation, making it one
of the largest CO2-sequestration projects in the world.
“Outside of Qatar, nobody has ever developed an LNG
project of this scale in one go,” said Frank Harris, head of
global LNG consulting for Wood Mackenzie.
According to industry sources, Gorgon, despite its size,
may be the tip of the LNG iceberg in Australia. No less than
11 greenfield LNG projects are now proposed for development
over the next 5 to 7 years with a combined initial
capacity of more than 60 million t/a.
Last year, Australia LNG production capacity stood at
around 20 million t/a, which is expected to increase to at
least 50 million t/a by 2017, which would make the country
one of the premier exporters in the world.
In fact, ConocoPhillips Australia President Joseph
Marushack said the nation, currently ranked as the world’s
sixth-largest LNG supplier, could become the world’s top
exporter in the next 11 years. “Australia is ideally positioned
to become a really dominant player,” he said, as his
company was awaiting a final investment decision on its
massive Gladstone LNG joint venture in Queensland. A
decision on Gladstone is expected by the end of next year
with first gas targeted to be shipped by mid-decade.
Oil Production in Decline
Most of the earlier discoveries in Australia were primarily
oil plays, but now gas has taken center stage. Major discoveries
in the Bass Strait, Queensland, the eastern coal seams,
and the Northwest Shelf have been the primary focus.
“The Northwest Shelf area contains some of the largest
and most prolific natural-gas accumulations in the world,”
said Harris Ghozali, senior engineer for Ryder Scott, which
has conducted extensive evaluations of Australia’s producing
basins.
On the flip side, Australia’s oil and condensate production
has declined an aggregate 35% between 2000 and
2008, according to the Australian Petroleum Production
and Exploration Association (APPEA). According to the
APPEA, in 2008 Australian oil and condensate production
was 168.5 million bbl, which was 1.3% below the 2007
level. Conventional gas production was up year on year
3.7% to 918 Bcf, while coal seam gas output jumped 39%
to 143 Bcf. A total of 108 wells were drilled in Australia in
2008, down 3% compared to the previous year.
“Higher production rates have not been achieved due to
facilities issues and greater than expected decline in some
producing fields. Oil and condensate production may temporarily
increase in 2009, but without major new discoveries,
it will return to the long-term downwards trend,” the
APPEA 2009 status report concluded.
One of those “facilities issues” involved Apache’s onagain,
off-again Van Gogh development in the Gippsland
Basin. The delayed subsea development was to begin
producing up to 20,000 BOPD in the second quarter of
this year, but has been delayed until year-end because of a
shipyard fire on the FPSO that was to link two subsea drill
centers with the 10 production wells.
In addition, production at the 50,000-BOPD Sinopec
and AED Oil Puffin field in the Timor Sea remains offline
after operations were suspended in August because of
alleged safety breaches on the FPSO. Woodside Petroleum
was forced earlier this year to suspend production at its
35,800-BOPD Vincent field off Western Australia after a
fire broke in one of the gas-compression units. Production
resumed in June.
But several new fields have begun ramping up. The BHP
Stybarrow oil project on the Northwest Shelf successfully
began production in November 2007 at a capacity of 80,000
BOPD. The Venture Angel field on the Northwest Shelf
came on stream in August at a capacity of 50,000 BOPD.
Santos, in partnership with a number of small and mid-tier
operators, has successfully discovered a number of smaller
oil fields in the Cooper Basin. In addition, BHP Billiton said
its Pyrenees field off Western Australia will begin production
in the first half of 2010 at a capacity of 96,000 BOPD.
Despite the increased activity and the number of new
fields either recently commissioned or soon to come on
line, the APPEA painted a grim picture for Australia’s future
oil production.
“Looking further ahead though, there have been very
few significant oil discoveries in recent years to support
the next generation of oilfield developments. Exploration
for oil is still largely directed toward mature oil provinces
with discoveries becoming smaller and smaller. Not
enough exploration is occurring to test unproven oil plays
in frontier areas that hold the greatest potential for a major
discovery. In addition, production from most of the new
or about-to-be-commissioned projects is expected to drop
away quickly. Australia’s liquids production therefore,
is expected to decline rapidly after 2009,” the association
concluded.
But the trade association predicted that LNG would
come to rescue. Beyond 2014, with the commissioning of
new greenfield projects with condensate-rich gas, LNG will
play a considerable role in helping to partially reverse the
decline in liquids production, the group’s report said.
http://www.spe.org/jpt/print/archives/2009/12/11Australia.pdf
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