Speaking at the RIU Good Oil Conference in Perth, Streitberg said he now rejects terms such as shale gas or unconventional hydrocarbons, as "unconventional is the new conventional" for the Laurel Formation play, which appears to be a significant basin-centred gas accumulation.

He said Buru and Mitsubishi were now satisfied they have defined a large continuous resource base around the Valhalla Noth-1, Asgard-1 and Paradise-1 wells, so the focus is moving towards development.

That path is likely to start with small regional gas supplies to remote communities, then moving to a 20 million cubic feet per day opportunity in the Kimberley region domestic market.

Those early steps will allow development of the initial cash-generating liquids resources, and gradually Buru and its partner can step out into the drier gas areas, developing a pipeline to supply gas into the wider domestic gas market and, potentially, backfill into one of the big LNG plans as ullage opens up.

After a decade in the Canning Basin, at least this time around, Streitberg no longer talks about "cracking the Canning", brute force exploration to establish the potential of the superbasin, instead he talks about "coming to grips" with the best way to chase its multiple oil and gas development opportunities.

The partners have spent a few hundred million shooting seismic and drilling wells trying to understand the underexplored basin, in the process learning how to work smarter and cheaper in the remote basin, and more focused on the areas that can best turn a profit.

The gas picture is sharpening, and the next step is likely to be a horizontal well to test the Laurel Formation's best zone after a successful fraccing campaign last year in two vertical wells.

Streitberg said the data generated from the last frac program had been exceptional, potentially some of the best results in Australia.

"We got some very big stimulated rock volumes with each stage of the fracs, so the fracs were very effective at opening up the rocks and getting us access to the hydrocarbons," he said,

"The gas quality is very good and we have less than 5% inerts. If you look at some of the other basins, particularly the Cooper Basin, they have very high CO2 levels. This gas you can virtually put into the pipeline once you take the condensate out of it."

There is around 40bbl/MMcfpd of liquids content and high levels of LPG, which makes a gas project a highly profitable undertaking.

In terms of Buru's huge basin-centred gas resource, it is probably closer to the Monteny Shale, one of Canada's best performing shale plays, except it has a few quirks of its own.

There is a significant over-pressuring, because the basin was uplifted in the Triassic after the gas was generated, something Streitberg said was almost unique in Australia.

"That strong over-pressure will give us very high flow rates," he said.

"Our challenge is to drill the wells cheaply enough and do the fracs cheaply enough to get the big enough gas flows to commercialise this.

"We know we have the gas there now and we need to commercialise it, and if only we could drill 3000m wells for $3 million … it would be a very different story."

Now there is between 1-3 trillion cubic feet of gas in reserves and resources around the Laurel Formation gas play and the best way to harvest them, attention is being focus on the potential for further oil discoveries.

In terms of the oil business, Buru is working to bring the Ungani oil field back into development.

It has halved operational costs since the well was shut in, and if the oil price remains around $50 per barrel he said the field could return to production as soon as an export out of Broome Port could be finalised.

Ungani is a four-way dip structure with a vuggy reservoir that could contain between 2-19 million barrels, and the field is just waiting for the macro economic environment to recover, which Streitberg believes is inevitable, and that will help push a resumption of exploration in the target rich environment.

There is a 50m oil column in Ungani and a 100m residual column below the Ungani Dolomite, which attests to the potential of the area.

"There has been a lot of oil generated in this basin, and frankly we haven't drilled through the source rock pod that has generated all this oil, which is not unusual in these frontier basins," he said.

"You only find the source rocks when you drill the holes, and obviously were are not going to do that at the moment."

Streitberg said Buru had so far been successful in defining its two major petroleum systems, which were previously missed in earlier sporadic exploration that lacked the benefits of modern seismic or petroleum system analysis.

He said Buru was coming to terms with its new understanding of the basin, had increased its success rate, and he was hopeful that will continue next year once the Ungani Trend prospect folio is refreshed and the next drilling targets are identified.

There is over 1000sq.km of good quality 3D on the Ungani Trend alone, and it remains a target rich environment that Buru merely needs the funding to chase, although its mix of state agreements and reset work commitments means it only has one commitment well to drill.

Beyond that, Streitberg said there is still a big conventional gas play that is still to be touched on.

He said Buru has a once in a generation opportunity to "do something really special in WA".

"We think we have the potential to be a major gas supplier and also to expand out oil production quite significantly," he said.