Properties of Rodinia
Rodinia has a well-defined operational strategy designed to identify and exploit the hydrocarbon potential of Australia’s under-explored Officer Basin. Focusing on onshore oil and natural gas exploration, Rodinia has identified 10 drilling targets containing an estimated 26.2 billion barrels of prospective (recoverable) un-risked, undiscovered light oil and has extensive future drilling opportunities. Drilling is expected to commence by Q2 2011 and, with drilling success, production is expected to begin in late 2011.
Resource Potential of the Officer Basin
The oil and natural gas basins of Australia were created approximately 540 to 800 million years ago (Neoproterozoic) when most of the world's land masses were merged as one supercontinent known as "Rodinia". As a result of the break-up of the supercontinent, the Australian basins share similar geological features with basins in Siberia, Russia and Oman in the Persian Gulf, which possess billions of barrels of light oil reserves. These analogous features include:
- The existence of Cambrian/Neoproterozoic reservoirs;
- Similar algal/bacterial source beds;
- Similar salt structures created by the evaporation of sea water; and
- Similar salt seals which are ideal for long-term hydrocarbon trapping.
Australia’s Officer Basin covers an area of more than 86.5 million acres in South and Western Australia. Rodinia currently has an approximate 84 per cent working interest in and is the operator of 23 million acres of underexplored land in the region. According to extensive seismic surveys and mining well bores, the Officer Basin has at least two working petroleum systems and several potential oil traps.