Location
The Release Areas are located in the Dampier Sub-basin of the Northern Carnarvon Basin in close proximity to major producing oil and gas accumulations. These include the Rankin Platform, the Angel gas field and the Wanaea, Cossack, Wandoo and Stag oil fields (Figure 1 [PDF, 296KB]). The gas pipeline from the Rankin Platform fields to the export LNG processing plant onshore traverses some of the Release Areas and plans are well advanced to bring the Reindeer/Caribou gas accumulation into production to supply the domestic gas market. The Elk gas accumulation is within Release Area W09-16, a gas discovery was made in the Morrel 1 well within Release Area W09-17 and the Lynx 1A well in Release Area W09-12 intersected tight gas sands. The Release Areas are between 30 and 120 km offshore from the Western Australian coastline and are in 40-100 m water depth.
Release Areas W09-12, W09-13 and W09-14 are located in the central depocentre of the Dampier Sub-basin and Release Areas W09-15, W09-16, W09-17, W09-18 and W09-19 are on the Enderby Terrace, the eastern flank of the sub-basin adjacent to its border with the Lambert Shelf (Figure 2 [PDF, 51KB]). The Release Areas range in size from W09-15 and W09-16 which are single graticular blocks of approximately 80 km2 to Release Area W09-19, which is made up of 17 graticular blocks and is 1370 km2 in size.
* A full version of the information covered in this part of the site is available as a downloadable file [PDF, 1,924KB] or you can navigate through the following pages: