Oil Prospect retrieved.

[Pepsi]

Finder Exploration seeks partner for Walton Basin tracts - Jamaica
Awarded a total of five blocks in 2006 - blocks 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 – covering a total of 14,500 sq km in the Walton Basin, offshore Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea, the combine of Australian explorers Finder Exploration and Gippsland Offshore, are now offering a farm-in opportunity. Water depths range from 100 to 1,000m and initial mapping of the 36 known leads has led to a reported estimated potential of 3.23 billion barrels of unrisked oil-in-place. The basin contains good-quality source rocks and trapping mechanisms consisting of both structural plays and reef plays. This, along with the presence of known natural oil seeps, proves there is a working hydrocarbon generating system. The joint venture will invest US$ 36 million for the exploration program that will cover a period of five years and includes a program of seismic data reprocessing, airborne geophysics and acquisition of new long offset seismic data; there is an optional drilling commitment in year five. Interpretation of 6,500 line km of newly acquired 2D seismic data is in progress, but the partners have already identified a number of large (more than 300 MMb oil in place) leads that are being upgraded to a prospect status. The main targets are: Tertiary carbonate build-ups; Intra-basinal highs; Pre-break-up Cretaceous fault blocks; and Intra-Tertiary basin floor fans.

[Pepsi]

Gippsland moves for share of offshore oil action
Email Print Normal font Large font Barry Fitzgerald
June 18, 2007

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GARIMPEIRO

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THERE is a bit of a buzz surrounding the Melbourne-based oil explorer with global ambitions, Gippsland Offshore Petroleum.
The stock closed steady at 22.5¢ on Friday for a market capitalisation of $29.2 million — a fair advance from the 17.5¢ a share level back in October 2006 when Garimpeiro last had a look at the junior, which is run by a bunch of geophysicists with a liking for high-leverage exploration plays.

Headed up by Cathy Norman, GOP has been busy working up its frontier plays to the point where it's now ready to offer them up to the big boys of the oil exploration game through big-spending exploration joint ventures.

The most advanced is the group's Walton Basin play offshore Jamaica. Expect some news on this one before long, with no less than seven confidentiality agreements signed with exploration and production oil groups interested in the 1 billion barrel-plus leads that GOP has worked up.

"We've de-risked it enough so that it has become very tantalising," Norman said last week.

The leads lie beneath the thick seabed limestone that has meant previous exploration in the Walton (10 of the 11 wells drilled recorded oil shows) was based on poor-quality seismic data. GOP's access to BHP Billiton's whizz-bang Falcon airborne gravity surveying system, which allows rapid remote measurement of sub-surface rock density, has helped in fine-tuning no less that 16 strong leads with a mapped (upside) potential of 10 billion barrels of oil.

It's little wonder then that some of the world's biggest oil groups wouldn't mind joining the hunt offshore Santa Cruz. But they will have to pay up, with GOP looking for a $US100 million ($A119 million) commitment that would recover GOP's costs to date, along with it getting a free-carried ride on a seismic program and two $US30-$US40 million exploration wells.

Smarter guys than Garimpeiro can figure out what the impact of securing such a deal would have on GOP's market capitalisation, remembering that its current 50 per cent equity position is likely to end up at 25 per cent.

Access to the Falcon technology was also the key factor in allowing little GOP to mix it with the big boys in the hunt for oil offshore Kenya in the Lamu basin.

Woodside and partners spent close to $US100 million drilling the much anticipated Pomboo 1 exploration well there in recent times.

It was a duster and to many in the Australian market, was a good reason to discount the value of GOP's Lamu acreage, as well as that held by Origin.

But the reality was that Pomboo was always going to be a high-risk shot as it was drilled on the eastern side of a geological high considered to also be the "dry side."

GOP's focus is on the so-called wet or western side of the geological high where the potential for some 1.5 billion barrels of oil and 5 trillion cubic feet of gas has previously been mapped.

Drill targets are not far off from being pinned down ahead of some more farm-out and drill-bit action next year.

And just to ensure that the deal flows keep coming, GOP has positioned itself for new joint-venture positions in the onshore Aquitaine Basin in France and offshore Madagascar.

Rusina Mining NL
THERE will be no Christmas cards this year for Goldman Sachs JBWere analysts from the junior nickel companies.

The broker spooked the sector on Friday with its call that nickel was its least preferred base metal because of demand weakness, supply growth and forward selling by producers/short selling by speculators.

While conceding that nickel at about $US18.40 a pound was "still magnificently priced" since its fall from the May 16 peak of $US24.58 a pound, GSJBW said that as the metal's fundamental outlook continued to weaken, prices have further to fall ($US12.85 a pound in 2008 and $US8.15 a pound in 2009).

But not all of the junior nickel stocks suffered on Friday. Rusina Mining NL was a case in point, with its 3¢ a share gain to 65¢, with some in the market tipping there was more to come (Shaw Stockbroking set a $1.20 "target price" on June 12).

The group's main game is its multipronged Acoje project in the Philippines, which is a direct beneficiary of China's surging imports of lateritic nickel ore. Ironically enough, that was one of the very reasons GSJBW was so down on Australian-based producers of the devil's metal.

Acoje, once one of the world's main chromite suppliers, is being worked up by Rusina across many fronts. First there is a 50:50 joint venture with local contractor DMCI to mine and export (to China) 5 million tonnes of surface laterite nickel ore, with Rusina free-carried for its 50 per cent profit share.

DMCI also partners Rusina in the feasibility study into a ferro-nickel smelter being established near DMCI's coal operation of Semirara Island, and the pair are to put all of their other mining properties in the country into a joint venture, including DMCI's exploration property on the doorstep off Xstrata/Indophil's world-class Tampakan copper/gold deposit.

Then there is Rusina's joint venture with London-listed and BHP Billiton-backed European Nickel (ENK), a $450 million company that is developer of the Caldag nickel heap-leach project in Turkey. ENK is funding a heap leach trial at Acoje and like DMCI, is to cement its relationship with Rusina by taking up a placement of shares.