Time: 11:30 am Virtual Social Icebreaker, Noon Speaker Presentation

Speaker: Jarvis Moore

Title: The Canning Basin of Western Australia, Discovering Unconventional Opportunity

Abstract: The Canning Basin, located on the northern coast of Western Australia, is one of Australia’s largest basins at over 400K sq. km (figure 1), two times the size of the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico.  It is adjacent to the prolific offshore Carnarvon Basin. A limited number of wells have been drilled with only marginal success on the basin margins bounding the northern deep Fitzroy Trough depocenter. Prograding Devonian and Carboniferous marine carbonates and siliciclastics were deposited in a transitional ramp setting in the Fitzroy Trough; defined source rocks with TOCs of .5 to 4.25% lie within this depocenter but limited information is known about the potential deeper sources.   Multiple tectonic phases altered this basin, creating an extensive set of both transpressional and extensional fault systems.

In the Canning Basin, the Australian government estimates potential tight gas resources are 74 TCF, and that an additional 70-150 TCF of shale gas resources are geologically and technically producible. This is approximately equal to the USGS assessed resource size for the entire US Marcellus shale gas system.

Unconventional discoveries like those found in North America have shown that there is significant potential for basin-centered gas around the Fitzroy Trough. Due to Australia’s needs for natural gas, both to feed the declining conventional feedstocks for export, as well as for meeting domestic energy needs, several vertical wells have been stimulated in the last 10 years demonstrating the gas potential within the basin-centered gas play.

Using prior work that was undertaken to develop a geological understanding of the Canning Basin, a US operator has initiated a new evaluation, including a large 3D seismic program (circa ~200 sq. miles), with a commitment to future testing, drilling and stimulation of unconventional wells to help better define and understand the play with an eye toward economic production.

Bio: Jarvis Moore has over 24 years of diversified Geological experience in the upstream Oil and Gas industry including positions with companies such as XTO Energy, Clearfork Resources and Encore Acquisitions Company. Mr. Moore is well versed in cross discipline integration of drilling, completion and production operations, due to past experiences covering prospect generation, planning and drilling oversight of hundreds of vertical and horizontal wells in both conventional and unconventional plays. He is a licensed Professional Geoscientist in the state of Texas and a SIPES Certified Earth Scientist. He holds a B.S. In Geology from Georgia Southern University and a M.S. in Geology from Texas Christian University. In addition to being a past-president and current member of the Fort Worth Geological Society, he is an active member of both the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists (SIPES).