Pilot wins GHG assessment licence in offshore Perth basin

Sydney-listed Pilot Energy has been awarded the G-12-AP greenhouse gas assessment licence located in the offshore Perth Basin, the company announced on July 31. The G-12-AP licence is adjacent to Pilot’s recently announced Declared Greenhouse Gas Storage Formation issued over the WA-31-L licence area and overlaps Pilot’s WA 481-P gas exploration licence.

Pilot stated that the declared area within WA-31-L and G-12-AP combined provides it with a contiguous greenhouse gas acreage position on a 100% basis (subject to completing the WA-31-L acquisition) across the offshore Perth basin. G-12-AP expands Pilot’s greenhouse gas acreage from 72 km² (WA-31-L) to a combined 7,472 km².

Under the complementary licences, Pilot can undertake exploration activities targeting both gas and carbon storage opportunities. For example, the planned 3D seismic survey over the Leander gas prospect and a potential follow-on gas appraisal well can also appraise the greenhouse gas storage resources.

Pilot’s initial assessment of the carbon storage potential has highlighted “significant” carbon storage expansion potential across most of the G-12-AP licence, with Permian and Triassic potential greenhouse gas storage target areas already identified. Subject to the successful exploration and appraisal of new carbon storage formations, the expanded licence area has the potential to provide a series of permanent carbon storage locations, similar in scale to the over 100 million tonne carbon storage resources identified in the WA-31-L licence area.

The company plans to initially focus on areas in G-12-AP immediately adjacent to the Cliff Head Carbon Storage Project to facilitate potential incremental expansion, leveraging future projects' injection operations and infrastructure to deliver large-scale competitive carbon solutions.

The CCS project marks the first stage of the Mid West Clean Energy Project, converting the Cliff Head oil field from oil production to a CCS project. The second stage of the project involves blue hydrogen production, and the third stage focuses on producing clean ammonia for export. 

Recently, Pilot signed an agreement with Triangle Energy to acquire the remaining 78.75% interest in the Cliff Head joint venture that it currently does not hold for A$15mn ($10.22mn).