The US shale oil and gas boom, brought on by the continuous rise in conventional oil prices, has been gaining major traction over the past two years. This has led to “unconventional” projects fast becoming hot property for global oil and gas majors, with over $33.84 billion worth of deals done in 2011 in the US alone. Since 1996, when the industry really started moving, significant developments in technology have seen investment into unconventional exploration and development programs throughout the rest of the world, including Canada, Poland, Hungary, and South Africa, in search of the next big story. Now, global attention is turning to Australia. With abundant shale resources and existing infrastructure in place, this country is poised to be the centre of the next big unconventional oil and gas boom. Regional exploration activity is already picking up pace. In April 2011, Hess Corporation signed a farm-in agreement with Falcon Oil & Gas Australia with plans to conduct a significant seismic surveying program in the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory. Falcon has 4 tenements in the region, covering 7 million acres, and is due to compete its Shenandoah-1 well in Q3 2011, which will provide further insight into the prospectivity of the basin. Next door to Falcon is Paltar Petroleum, an Australian-based company led by CEO Marc Bruner and Chief Geologist Ben Law. Bruner and Law were pioneers of the Karoo Basin in South Africa; large-scale North American gas fields, such as the Pinedale Anticline and the Powder River Basin; and Hungarian resources, such as the Mako Trough. Marc Bruner and Ben Law believe they have come across a world-class resource, pointing to a Ryder Scott report that estimates the Beetaloo Basin holds a potential recoverable resource of 64 TCF of gas and 17 billion barrels of oil. With this new venture Marc Bruner will be hoping to replicate the success of his previously founded companies, Ultra Petroleum and Pennaco Energy, two unconventional oil and gas companies that took off after their foundation in the late 1990s.
