Reaping the earth’s bounty

TWO years of work by Canadian oil and gas consultant Tom Fontaine and Hardman Resources managing director Ted Ellyard is coming together in a $5 million IPO and Australian Stock Exchange listing of local company Bounty Oil & Gas.

The company, headed by managing director Mr Fontaine and chairman Mr Ellyard, has put together a portfolio of nine Australian and New Zealand projects, with interests ranging between 10 and 85 per cent.

Mr Fontaine, who has spent his professional life proving up projects for others, says each Bounty project has untapped potential ready to be realised with the application of technologies used in Canada, where 10,000 wells are drilled annually.

Bounty is starting off the year at full speed with the launch of its prospectus on January 10, and the drilling of a new well in the onshore Woodada gas field.

The Woodada field, in which the company has a 25 per cent interest, has been producing for 20 years, and may contain a further 15 billion cubic feet of gas.

Current production is from seven wells, at 3.8 million cubic feet per day.

The company also is looking forward to the new year on account of its 10 per cent interest in Perth Basin permit TP/15. This permit is adjacent to WA-286-P, in which the promising Cliff Head-1 well is to be drilled, with results expected in January.

Bounty’s TP/15 permit contains three identified drilling prospects in the same Cliff Head trend.

Bounty plans to drill three offshore wells during 2003, in TP/15, and in the Sydney and Great South (NZ) basins.

Ten leads have been identified in the Sydney Basin permit, close to infrastructure and a large energy market, while the Great South Basin has been estimated to contain 2.5 billion barrels of oil.

Bounty expects to be aided in these offshore ventures by its exclusive Australasian marketing rights to Canadian seismic technology, especially in the Sydney Basin, where two million acres remain undrilled.

The company will also be looking at using this seismic advantage in its offshore Dampier Sub-basin permit, close to fields containing a combined estimated 130 million barrels of oil.

Bounty’s IPO for the issue of 25 million 20-cent shares and attaching options is underwritten by Intersuissed Corporate.