Revised Cliff Head sale nets $16m for Triangle

Triangle Energy Global’s payoff for the sale to Pilot Energy of its Cliff Head oil asset off the coast of Western Australia now stacks up to $16 million after adjustments made to offset delays in the deal settlement.

The new agreement features an extra $1 million for Triangle, which now plans to focus on its prospective conventional oil and gas activities in the Perth Basin. The settlement is expected to be made in in mid-October instead of August 1 because of Federal Government administrative delays and Pilot will also reimburse Triangle for operating expenses incurred between those dates.

Following the government’s recent landmark decision to establish a carbon-capture storage (CCS) facility at Cliff Head – which will be operated by Pilot – Triangle will divest its 78.75 per cent stake in the joint venture (JV) to streamline its portfolio and concentrate on its burgeoning Perth Basin activities.

The rejigged sale agreement will see Pilot pay an increased $4.5 million cash portion to Triangle instead of $3 million, with a further $4 million (down from $4.5 million) contingent upon it securing a greenhouse gas injection licence from the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator. A further $7.5 million in royalties from the carbon sequestration project will be based on a 2 per cent revenue royalty from third-party carbon management services.

Meanwhile, Triangle’s pursuit for onshore oil and gas at its Booth prospect in WA’s Perth Basin has kicked into gear, with the spudding of its Booth-1 well anticipated at the end of this month and upcoming drilling of the Becos-1 well soon after.

The Booth prospect at the company’s L7 acreage at Mt Horner hosts a prospective resource range of between 113 billion cubic feet of gas (Bcf) and 540 Bcf, with a best estimate of 279 Bcf for the Kingia-High Cliff reservoirs. Additionally, the potential is believed to exist for oil or gas in the overlying Dongara and Jurassic sandstones.

According to management, the 2900m well at Booth will be the first drilling at the acreage for about 30 years and represents one of the last underexplored landholdings in the mighty North Perth Basin.

Triangle Energy Global managing director Conrad Todd said: “We are very pleased to have finalised the Cliff Head sale agreement with Pilot. With the Booth-1 well expected to spud later in July, Triangle is on the verge of the most active period in the Company’s recent history.”

The company says it will continue to support the operations of the Cliff Head oilfield until the completion of the transaction and its existing employees will remain working at the site as it transitions to the CCS project. As part of the preparation for the project’s conversion to a carbon storage operation, it will enter a non-production-phase as soon as next month.

That is expected to significantly reduce the operating costs until the facilities are converted.

Triangle’s Becos prospect lies about 16km west of Booth and has a prospective resource range of 1 million barrels of oil (MMbbl) to 21 MMbbl, with a best estimate of 5 MMbbl. The company says the target is much shallower than Booth at a little more than 1000m in depth.

Management expects to start drilling at Becos in September, subject to government approvals.

The possibility of a third well at L7 also exists with the prospective Huntswell Deep target, a previously unmapped structure that was identified on 3D seismic about 6km north-west of Booth.

Few things excite a drill bit punter more than an oil-and-gas well spudding. With a new lease on life as a pure oil-and-gas explorer and plenty of renewed activity in the Perth Basin, Triangle will seemingly soon be looking at two such wells in as many months.

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