The Australian newspaper is reporting this morning that it has seen a note sent to potentially interested parties by oil services group Schlumberger offering 100% interests in several offshore production licences in Australia.

"These licences and associated assets have a broad range of ¬opportunities, including existing mature production (around 19,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day), substantial infill drilling and workover opportunities, and a large exploration and development prospect inventory that could extend productive life well into the future," Schlumberger said in the note, which was obtained by the newspaper.

"The opportunity to access existing infrastructure makes for a complete integrated package for the right buyer."

The infrastructure could include oil platforms such as Kingfish and pipeline system that connects the fields, which are 20km-80km offshore, with the mainland facilities.

The Gippsland Basin remains one of BHP Billiton's petroleum heartlands, along with the Gulf of Mexico, plus some speculative exploration acreage in Western Australia's Carnarvon Basin and offshore Trinidad and Tobago, but ExxonMobil is looking to sell ¬declining oil fields and some exploration and development assets around the world, and the Bass Strait has not been quarantined from that process.

"Asset divestment and acquisitions have become a normal part of our ongoing operations," ExxonMobil spokesperson David Rosenthal told analysts recently.

Potential buyers

Potential buyers would be smaller producers that are prepared to develop the assets that are insignificant for an oil major like ExxonMobil.

Last August it and Shell sold in the producing Anasuria Cluster located about 175 kilometres off the coast of Aberdeen in the central North Sea for $105 million to Malaysian oil companies Hibiscus Petroleum and Ping Petroleum.

Hibiscus already has a small interest in the Gippsland Basin, with the undeveloped West Seahorse field, and could be a potential buyer, as could WA-based Quadrant Energy, which in its earlier incarnation as Apache Energy undertook a major but unsuccessful exploration effort.

"We are regularly approached about our interest in buying, selling or partnering in various projects and properties," a Quadrant spokesperson told Energy News.

"For multiple reasons, we cannot comment on market speculation or other companies' interests in these matters."

Debt-heavy Santos is probably not a potential buyer given it recently sold out of the Kipper field with the GBJV to Mitsui E&P, and Mitsui is still looking for assets in Australia, as it is known to be casting its eye over Origin Energy's Perth Basin assets, and could be interested in looking into the GBJV data room.

Cooper Energy, which is developing the Sole and Basker-Manta-Gummy gas fields, has effectively ruled itself out of the bidding.

A spokesperson for the company told Energy News that Cooper was focused on its four-year-old gas strategy, which it had been working on for the past four years, and was not interested in offshore oil production at this stage.

Heartland

The Gippsland Basin was the heartland of the Australian offshore oil patch for decades, and while production has since fallen and been eclipsed by the Carnarvon Basin, there is still plenty of oil in reservoirs that could be a rich source of revenue for a new, more focused operator keen to revitalise the basin.

ExxonMobil has 50% of the GBJV, but its sale document suggests BHP is also willing to sell out.

The pair is expected to continue to operate production based around the basin's significant gas reserves to feed into hungry east coast markets, where there are around seven trillion cubic feet of gas resources remaining in Bass Strait.

Since the 1960s, ExxonMobil has produced more than four billion barrels of oil from Bass Strait, which at its peak was producing 500,000 bopd, making it one of the world's biggest producing regions, but in recent years production has fallen to around 40,000bopd.

Neither ExxonMobil nor BHP has commented on any sale plans.

The buyers would incur decommissioning costs, unless they could work the assets and extend production.