PEP 11 covers 4,576 km² of the offshore Sydney Basin immediately adjacent to the largest gas market in Australia and is a high impact exploration project.

Bounty’s farm in partner Advent Energy Ltd (“Advent”) has proven an active hydrocarbon generation and migration system as well as establishing an inventory of leads and prospects with prospective resources of 4.7 TCF gas at the P50 confidence level.

The potential of this proven petroleum basin has been enhanced by the confirmation of the presence of apparent ongoing hydrocarbon seeps.  Sub-bottom profile data, swath bathymetry, seismic and echo sounder data collected by Geoscience Australia along the continental slope / permit margin has demonstrated active erosional features in conjunction with geophysical indications of gas escape.

The operator has previously interpreted significant seismically indicated gas features.  Key indicators of hydrocarbon accumulation features have been interpreted following review of the 2004 seismic data which was reprocessed in 2010.  The seismic features include apparent hydrocarbon related diagenetic zones (HRDZ), amplitude versus offset (AVO) anomalies and potential flat spots.

Mapped prospects and leads within the offshore Sydney Basin are generally located less than 50 km from Australia’s largest energy market – the Sydney-Wollongong-Newcastle greater metropolitan area.  This area has a population of approximately 5,000,000 people.  Traditionally, all natural gas used in New South Wales has been piped in from South Australia and the Bass Strait.  However, studies by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) state that those sources may not be able to meet the demand for gas in the medium to longer term.

The PEP 11 joint venture has demonstrated considerable gas generation and migration in the offshore Sydney Basin, with the previously observed mapped prospects and leads remaining highly prospective for gas.