Sapex and He Nuclear both presented at yesterday’s Excellence in Upstream Energy conference in Sydney.

While both companies have ventured into under-explored basins, they have very different ideas on how to exploit the region’s vast petroleum potential.

Sapex, which plans to list on the Australian bourse this Friday, is searching for oil, CSM, coal-to-liquids and underground coal gasification opportunities in one of central Australia’s “forgotten” basins, the Arckaringa of north-central South Australia, where it holds seven new exploration licences covering 74,116 square kilometres.

“We’re unusual in that we’re targeting three commodities at the same time,”

managing director Andrew Andrejewskis told the conference.

“And there’s company-making potential in each commodity.”

Sapex holds seven petroleum exploration licences covering virtually the entire prospective area of the Arckaringa, covering 74,116sq.km in the far north and mid-north of the state, as well as PEL 120 near Adelaide, which will be investigated for its CSM potential.

The new licences – which cover an area about the size of the entire Cooper Basin oil and gas province – have more than doubled the total prospective area of South Australia now held under petroleum exploration licence to 140,225sq.km.

Unlike Sapex, He Nuclear has a “really narrow focus”, according to chairman Ian Mutton.

In partnership with Central Petroleum, the privately held Sydney-based company is moving to prove up a commercial source of rare helium gas in the Northern Territory’s Amadeus Basin.

“When we read the well report [of the McGee-1 well, drilled by Pacific Oil & Gas in 1972], we saw that the helium content was 6.2%,” Mutton said.

“That’s extraordinarily high and extraordinarily exciting.”

Mutton said the Central-He Nuclear joint venture was aiming to drill a follow-up well on this prospect in the fourth quarter of this year, depending on the results of a 3D seismic survey.

Helium prices have been escalating over recent years and this looks set to continue, driven by increasing world consumption (3.3% a year over the last decade) and decreasing US stockpiles, which the US Government reports will be depleted by 2015, according to Mutton.

The helium play at this stage is focused on the Mt Kitty and McGee prospects located south of Alice Springs in EP125 and EP 82, respectively. But it could be more extensive as both reservoir and seal have been noted in other parts of the basin.