Armour Energy Granted Exploration Tenement in Queensland

Armour Energy Limited has been granted exploration tenement ATP1087 over an area of 7,138 sq. km in Northern Queensland. 

A company statement said that the target Lawn Hill Shale contains a thick, organic-rich source rock section showing up to 8% gas recorded in mud logs during drilling of four petroleum exploration wells by Comalco in the early 1990s.

Armour’s Independent Experts have previously assessed 22.5 trillion cubic feet of mean prospective gas resource in the Proterozoic aged Lawn Hill Shale in ATP1087. Additional gas prospectivity has now also been identified by Armour in the underlying Riversleigh Shale that extends across the entire tenement.

The primary target for Armour’s aggressive drilling program over the next three years is to define up to 9 trillion cubic feet of gas resources and reserves from the Lawn Hill Shale Play in eastern area of ATP 1087.  This is a sufficient gas volume to supply a 6 million tonne per annum Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project for a period of 25 years.

The company is proposing to finalise initial drill sites across ATP1087 during early 2013. These will be located on preexisting seismic lines. During the 2013 drilling campaign Armour proposes to drill three vertical wells and one lateral well targeting the Lawn Hill Shale. The first well is proposed in the eastern area of ATP 1087 adjacent to the Egilibria 1 well which recorded up to 8% gas (390 gas units) on mud logs during drilling in 1992 . Further seismic surveys are also proposed for 2013.

Armour Energy’s 2013 drilling plans also include exploration of a newly identified regionally extensive shale gas play within the Riversleigh Shale.  This shale is a stratigraphic equivalent of the Barney Creek Shale in the McArthur Basin, Northern Territory over which Armour holds tenements and applications over 125,000 sq. km. The Riversleigh Shale has recorded significant gas shows up to 2.5% on mud logs in the Argyle Creek 1 and Desert Creek 1 wells in the western areas of ATP 1087.