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Brought to you by BULLS N’ BEARS
Rowena Duckworth
Deep beneath the red dirt of outback South Australia lies what could be one of the most significant untapped oil and gas discoveries in Australia’s history. And now, ASX-listed H3 Energy has brought in one of the world’s most respected energy dealmakers to help turn that potential into reality.
The company has appointed London-based LAB Energy Advisors as its farm-in advisor – a globally recognised specialist with a track record of brokering deals across some of the world’s most complex energy transactions. LAB’s brief is to secure the right industry heavyweights willing to co-invest and drill.
At the heart of the story is H3’s Alinya project, a vast and largely unexplored block in the Officer Basin, directly west of Coober Pedy. The entire acreage has been independently assessed by Fluid Energy Consultants to contain a prospective resource of up to 4.3 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas and 1.3 billion barrels of oil – numbers that would make the eyes of any major energy company widen.
H3 Energy – formerly Whitebark Energy – holds 100 per cent ownership of the block and remains the operator, a rarity for a project of this scale where majors or deep-pocketed partners have usually already taken a seat at the table.
’We believe the project represents a compelling opportunity, particularly in the context of strengthening oil and gas markets.”
H3 Energy chief executive officer Nik Sykiotis
The crown jewel of the portfolio is the Rickerscote Prospect, a geological beast with multiple stacked reservoir targets and the single largest structure within the lease.
Rickerscote is a potentially play-opening well for the entire Officer Basin. The target covers a colossal 400 square kilometres of closure and stands out as one of Australia’s largest undrilled, seismically defined onshore structures. It has the potential to unlock a regionally significant hydrogen, helium, and hydrocarbon field.
H3 says structural depth mapping suggests Rickerscote stacks up in scale to Australian heavyweights such as the Barrow Island and Gorgon fields, putting its size into perspective.
Fluid Energy has assessed the Rickerscote structure as potentially holding a best-estimate (2U) recoverable resource of 1.06 Tcf of gas and 145 million barrels of liquids. The low case is 268 billion cubic feet of gas and 34 million barrels of oil, while the high case stretches to a jaw-dropping 4.086 Tcf of gas and 617 million barrels of oil.
But the story for H3E doesn’t stop at oil and gas. Independent assessors Sproule ERCE have also reviewed Rickerscote’s potential for natural hydrogen and helium — two commodities attracting intense global interest as the energy transition accelerates. Their high-case (3U) estimate puts the structure at a whopping 1.2 billion kilograms of hydrogen and 209 billion cubic feet of helium, with geological chances of success ranging between 7% and 17%.
And that’s just one of more than 20 prospects identified across Alinya. The Rickerscote-1 well, once drilled, could open the door to decades of hydrocarbon, hydrogen and helium production across the wider basin.
The project is also a stone’s throw from the Moomba gas hub, which could slash the cost of piping hard-to-contain hydrogen and helium to market.
H3 Energy chief executive officer Nik Sykiotis said: “With a large-scale exploration target of over a Tcf of gas (with Hydrogen and Helium potential) and over one hundred million barrels of oil in Rickerscote alone, we believe the project represents a compelling opportunity, particularly in the context of strengthening oil and gas markets.”
With global oil prices rising, the timing feels right. LAB Energy’s appointment is expected to fast-track discussions with potential partners possessing the financial firepower and technical capability to drill one of Australia’s most compelling undrilled targets. H3 says it is ready to spud a well within 12 months of securing funding and regulatory approvals.
If LAB Energy can pull the right partner into the tent, the quiet sands of the Officer Basin could soon echo with the rumble of a drill rig chasing what might be one of Australia’s most consequential onshore energy discoveries.
With a basin-opening well looming and more than 20 follow-up targets already mapped, Rickerscote could be just the first chapter in a much bigger energy story unfolding deep beneath South Australia’s outback.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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