Messina told Energy News yesterday that as a player in the Perth Basin, it made sense for the company to look at all opportunities on offer in the basin, but it was not restricting itself to Western Australia's premier onshore basin.
"During the course of 2016 Transerv has been looking at good business opportunities to expand on some of the experience and knowledge we have gained after operating in the Perth Basin over a number of years," he said.
"Those opportunities don't have to be in the Perth Basin, and some of them aren't, but clearly there is an additional advantage in looking at assets that are within reasonable proximity to our existing operations."
Origin put its assets on the market under a UBS-run sales process as part of a plan to reduce debt, and Messina said it was a "good opportunity" for Transerv.
Analysts have suggested that that Origin could reap $150-300 million, which is far above Transerv's cash or market capitalisation of $2.4 million and $10.86 million respectively.
Messina said the company had good financial support to participate in the process.
Transerv issued a statement to the ASX this morning, it has lodged a non-binding indicative offer for the assets, but that the sales process has some way to go.
Messina said all the assets being examined were advanced or in production and would aid with the development of Warro.
There, the company and Alcoa (65%) are hoping to re-test the Warro-4 well in coming weeks, where there are trillions of cubic feet of gas to be developed - if the companies can control water flows and establish commercial gas flow rates.
Second round bids for the Origin assets are due next week, with a final decision in June.
The Australian has reported that Japanese giant Mitsui and Singapore wealth fund Temasek's Pavilion Energy are also looking at the assets, while AWE is believed to be interested in securing operatorship over all permits from Origin.
The jewel in the crown is the AWE-operated Waitsia gas field, which contains hundreds of billions of cubic feet of gas in newly-discovered deep conventional reservoirs.
A 10 terajoule per day trial is about to get underway, and a final investment decision could provide decades of gas into the WA domestic gas market.
