Amadeus’ discovery statistics compared favourably with the Cooper, Surat, Carnarvon and Perth basins – and the figures also showed the central Australian basin had the second highest amount of reserves for each exploratory well, the company claimed.

In the Amadeus, an average four million barrels of reserves existed for each of the 37 exploration wells drilled, compared with the average of two million barrels of reserves for the Cooper and Perth basins.

When looking at wells per 1000 square kilometres, the Amadeus Basin had an exploration well density of 0.2 compared with the Cooper’s density of 6.2, indicating that the basin was underexplored.

A paper to be presented at the Central Australian Basins Symposium in Alice Springs in August also highlights the potential for discovery in Australia’s centre, according to Central.

“Petroleum Resource Potential of the Amadeus Basin” by John Warburton, Titus Murray and Torey Marshall refers to a screening study of potentially producible petroleum of around a risked 650,000,000 barrels oil or 6 trillion cubic feet of gas remaining in Amadeus, Central said.

The paper also refered to a “world class” exploration cost of US$0.50 to US$1.50 per barrel of oil equivalent.

Central Petroleum recently commissioned independent studies of four shallow prospects in Amadeus with target depths less than 2,000m.

These showed initial deterministic P10 (10% probability of these resources being exceeded) upside recoverable potential of over 700,000,000 barrels of oil equivalent in a mix of gas and oil prospects, Central said.

The Murphy South prospect had potential for petroleum trapped under a subsalt seal, a play type thought to be analogous to some of the giant lower Cambrian and neo-Proterozoic fields of Siberia and the Sichuan Basin in China, according to Central.

This prospect also has potential to contain up to 6% of helium, which is currently selling in bulk for US$60-65 per thousand cubic feet in the United States, Central said.