India's BPCL Hopes for Shale Success in Australia

Indian state owned energy firm Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) is eyeing success in the Australian shale gas sector, Financial Express newspaper said in a report.

Company’s upstream subsidiary, Bharat Petro Resources (BPRL), has a 27.803% stake in Western Australia’s (WA) Perth Basin considered to be a prolific reserve of shale gas in the world.

The shale gas block, EP413, is being operated by Norwest Energy with 27.945% interest and the remaining 44.252% is held by AWE.

According to Norwest, EP413 is the focal point of its shale gas exploration strategy, and is a good candidate to become WA’s first shale gas province. US Energy Information Administration has assessed 59 TCF of shale gas being located in the region but Norwest Energy feels it can even go up higher once the complete appraisal programme Arrowsmith-2 is over.

BPCL officials are gung-ho about it and seeing to turn their maiden shale gas foray into another upstream success story but said some concrete figures will come to the fore in 2014, Financial Express said.

If reserves are proven and found to be viable, BPRL could have claim to almost 20 tcf of natural gas reserves by virtue of their high participating interest, something it hasn't yet seen even in Mozambique where the company holds claim to around 10 tcf out of the total expected reserve base of 60 tcf, approximately, the newspaper report added.

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