The area was overlooked by the industry for more than 20 years, despite the fact that BP found a 700m-thick hydrocarbon column, presumed to be mostly dry gas in tighter rocks.

 

"It was overlooked, and people didn't care about more gas on the North West Shelf, but the presence of liquids has changed that," Boserio told Energy News.

 

"When you think back 700m of continuous shows indicated a good system working, but there was never any real follow-up in the whole of the wider Roebuck Basin."

 

Pathfinder picked up the acreage based on the fact that Apache Corporation had moved in next door and Woodside Petroleum and Shell were going hard in the deeper water areas, drilling big structures with a heavy work program.

 

"We were no smarter than anyone else. We thought this was an area of increased activity, probably dry gas prone, but after we had held the acreage, along came the Phoenix South discovery, and we renewed our focus," he said.

 

Boserio said WA-479-P and WA-487-P have all the hallmarks of the same Triassic play that is emerging in the nearby blocks operated by Quadrant Energy with the Phoenix, Phoenix South and Roc discoveries, and where the proposed Dorado-1 exploration well could further cement the potential of the basin.

 

"We have the full Triassic sequence, and it is very analogous to what they have seen in the Phoenix area, where there is an embayment and a deltaic input. Quadrant calls their feeder the Keraudren delta, and we see something similar in our areas," he explained.

 

Pathfinder has modelled that sediments have been washed out from the Fitzroy Graben along the East Mermaid Delta, and passed over the Palaeozoic strata, into the Mesozoic-aged basin proper, where it has been deposited, the same process as in the Keraudren Delta.

 

"Where it gets over the big bounding faults on the embayments, you get these very large depocentes, and the Lower Triassic is proving a very rich gas-condensate source rock. We see in our area, which is undrilled, exactly the same deltaic setting, and perhaps even more favourable because we have got a couple of major highs in the outboard, which has dumped the sediment into a horst and graben setting," he said.

 

The closest drilling to Pathfinder's leases involve the early 1970s East Mermaid-1 well, which did not drill deep enough to test the Triassic, while in 2014 Woodside Petroleum and Shell drilled the Anhalt-1 duster, which appeared to confirm Pathfinder's thesis is that the grabens closer to the coast should be in a better depositional environment than that seen outboard of the deltaic sands were source and reservoir were absent.

 

It's a theory that is yet to be tested with the drillbit, and Pathfinder is hoping to support drilling with a farm-out of its blocks to support the fully permitted Nightcap 3D seismic survey, which should help derisk Pina Colada, its leading prospect.

 

Pina Colada has the potential to contain 180MMbbl of oil or 1.3Tcf/80MMbbl of condensate (mean) with an even larger upside.

 

Pina Colada is essentially a plan to redrill Mermaid-1, one of the earliest wells ever drilled on the North West Shelf, and drill through the Jurassic Plover formation, and through a deeper seal to test a Triassic prospect draped over a major horst.

 

Pathfinder has been shopping for a partner for some time, but has been unfortunate to be trying to sell its part in one of Australia's most promising new exploration areas at a time when exploration spending has been cut globally.

 

Boserio is hopeful that Woodside's eight well Outer Canning Basin program, for which just three wells were drilled, has not soured farminees.

 

"They really drilled in the wrong province, and we, as an industry, are trying to unlock a poorly explored, enormous area, where the lower Triassic sourced petroleum system exists.

 

"Quadrant have found it in the Phoenix embayment, and we are all trying to work out where else along the Paleo coastline there have been similar depositional settings for source, reservoir and seal."

 

Pina Colada is the focus, but there is a second prospect, Mai Tai, which would be covered by an expanded Pathfinder survey that would aid imaging over the entire delta, something a larger company would want.

 

 

Pathfinder also has two blocks to the north, WA-508-P and WA-509-P, which were picked up in case there was success in of success in the planned eight wells to be drilled in the Outer Canning, supported by good shows inboard of the Barcoo area of the Browse Basin.

 

The plays in the Barcoo Sub-basin are more closely related to the Plover mid-Jurassic formation, and Pathfinder's aim is to shoot and interpret seismic to help explain why Woodside drilled Hannover South-1 and Omar-1 without success.

 

The company's aim is to shoot and interpret seismic, adding value and looking for farminees.

 

Over the past year the company has been unable to shoot the seismic, so the focus has been on pulling the areas apart to fully understand the plays over the whole area. 

 

Since then it has hit the farm-out market, with some success from bigger oilers looking at the dataroom.

 

Its Browse Basin work has focused on two multi-Tcf prospects Bellini (WA-509-P) and Barcoo North (WA-508-P). 

 

Pathfinder has committed to two modest surveys, and it has a letter of intent with a contractor, which is hoping to mobilise a vessel to Australia.

 

It believes it needs $5-10 million to shoot the two seismic surveys.

 

 

Beyond its frontier interest, Boserio also said the company was casting anew for production, primarily in Australasia, where it has experience, pending adding a financial backer to its technical team.

 

Boserio also confirmed that Pathfinder had looked at Origin Energy's E&P assets, but he said it was "probably too big without a major investor".

 

"You never know. Some of the institutions we are speaking with are quite large, and the reasons we looked at Origin early is we didn't know if they were going to remain as one package, or in the fullness of time become split up."