Carnarvon Petroleum Limited gave an update on the work being performed in assessing the results from the Phoenix South-1 well in permit WA-435-P in the North West Shelf of Western Australia, and to provide some guidance on the likely timing of the drilling of the Roc well.

Apache on behalf of the Joint Venture (JX Nippon, Carnarvon and Finder Exploration) is undertaking a technically complex and thorough process of assessing the well results. To provide a sense for this, an outline of some of the work being undertaken has been included as an annexure to this update.

At a Joint Venture meeting on Tuesday Dec. 9, Carnarvon was provided with a detailed update by Apache (the operator) of progress on their technical evaluation. Because this is such a unique discovery in terms of the type of oil discovered and the nature of the reservoir rocks, together with key data not yet being available from the laboratories, the data set is incomplete and it is not possible for Carnarvon to provide specific information about the size of the discovery at this time. Our concern is that such incomplete information has the potential to be misleading to investors without a significant amount of additional analyses and evaluation.

Tags: Carnarvon Petroleum Limited