This target for the 2006/07 financial year would be fuelled by the company’s expanding entitlements from the newly producing offshore Gippsland oil field interest, and its current exploration and production interests in the Cooper-Eromanga Basin, chairman Robert Kennedy said.
Kennedy said the figure did not include gas production from its anticipated $35 million acquisition of 40% of Arrow Energy’s stage one development of the Tipton West coalbed methane project in Queensland’s Surat Basin.
Nor did it include upside from new discoveries in its onshore and offshore exploration and development activities in the Cooper, Otway, Browse, Gippsland and Carnarvon Basins.
Kennedy said the September quarter for this year had generated sales revenues of $29.4 million – nearly three times more than the previous quarter and nearly equal to the first half-year revenue for 2004-2005 of $30.4 million.
In addition, new exploration wells had found more oil that the company had produced during the year, he said.
“With the acquisition of the offshore Gippsland fields, current net oil reserves stood at 13.5 million barrels at the end of the September 2005 quarter, compared to under one million barrels four years ago,” Kennedy said.
Beach managing director Reg Nelson told shareholders the company faced a year of unprecedented exploration and production activity “across a very diverse portfolio" of onshore and offshore Australian projects.
“In so doing, while we have increased in size and scope substantially, we have reached this point of growth well balanced and well diversified for the future,” Nelson said.
Of the Tipton West CBM acquisition, Nelson said its ability to realise early gas sales, its closeness to pipeline infrastructure and markets and the opportunity for further exploration and development, gave Beach potential to be one of Australia’s largest onshore gas resources of up to two trillion cubic feet.
Beach is expected to make a $35 million financial commitment to the project next month, which involves funding the drilling of 80 to 90 CBMwells over the next 12 months.
The company also said the Basker Manta Gummy field, which produced its first oil this week, could have its gas condensate resource developed by 2008.
In addition, the company said its recent move into New Zealand’s offshore Canterbury Basin offered a strong new exploration project in waters east of the country’s South Island.
Meanwhile, the new Cooper Basin oil discovery, Kiana-1, just west of Moomba, is expected to be in full production next month.
