UK oil and gas major BP has sought environmental approvals from the Australian federal government for a $600 million exploration program in the frontier waters of the Great Australian Bight, off the continent's south coast.
BP holds four exploration blocks in the Ceduna Sub-Basin off the state of South Australia, designated EPP 37, EPP 38, EPP 39 and EPP 40. The areas are in water depths of 1,000-3,000 meters and lie about 400 km (248 miles) west of Port Lincoln and 300 km southwest of Ceduna.
The company plans to drill four exploration wells in the permits, starting in the southern summer of 2015-2016, and taking 18 to 30 months.
"Exact well locations are yet to be determined, however they will be drilled within the Ceduna 3D seismic survey area, which was acquired between November 2011 and May 2012 and covered 12,100 sq km," the company said in its application, filed Monday.
BP was awarded the offshore permits in early 2011, but was required to meet additional conditions in the wake of the 2010 Macondo oil spill disaster in the US Gulf of Mexico. The additional conditions emphasized the need for oil-field best practice behavior by the operator, reinforcing BP's undertaking to fully integrate lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon incident into its systems and processes, the Australian government said at the time.
In its application, BP acknowledged there could be concerns about the drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident.
"Numerous investigations into this incident have been published, including BP's own investigation, which found that the incident had multiple causes involving multiple parties," the company said. "Nevertheless, BP has moved swiftly to identify, share and act upon the key lessons from the investigation ... Specific lessons from Deepwater Horizon have been organized into five themes: prevention and drilling safety; containment; relief wells; oil spill response; and crisis management," BP added.
At the time the permits were awarded to the company, Mike Daly, BP's executive vice president of exploration, said they represented "a material and early move into an unexplored deepwater basin." Phil Home, managing director of BP's Australian upstream oil and gas, added then that the company's experience told it that "the geology has a high potential for containing hydrocarbons."
Woodside Petroleum was the last company to drill in the Great Australian Bight, in 2003. Woodside's Gnarlyknots well, at the time the most expensive well ever drilled in Australia at around $60 million, was a dry hole.
