PNG PPL 579

Detailed Overview of PPL 579


PPL579 is the amalgamation of licenses APPL579 and PPL326, the later was held by Larus for 6 years from 2010. To date, Larus Energy has acquired extensive regional and prospect orientated proprietary 2D seismic data plus multi-client 2D seismic data that enabled the basin prospectivity to be defined and ultimately justified the 1865 km2 Nanamarope 3D seismic survey acquired in 2023. Other geological and geophysical data sets complement and supplement the seismic data including gravity, magnetics and surface geology. Larus Energy has undertaken sufficient exploration work to re-write the geological history and hydrocarbon potential of the region..

Larus has now established that the Torres Basin, which is 250 km long and 150 km wide and up to 10 km thick is a rifted Australian Continental Margin Basin overlain by prospective Tertiary age reservoirs. PPL579 covers the most significant part of the Torres Basin with multiple Miocene sand pulses caught-up in a toe-thrust fold belt above a modelled generative late Cretaceous source rock kitchen. Larus Energy has identified multiple play types and a large number of well-defined prospects within the Miocene to Pliocene section. Reservoir quality sands are clearly mappable within four-way dip closed anticlines, fault traps and large pinch-out plays with multi-billion barrel of recoverable oil potential. Note that the Miocene to Pliocene sands are equivalent in age to much of the productive section in Indonesian and other Southeast Asian Basins.

In addition, basement high carbonate reservoir plays defined on 2D seismic data are mapped in both PPL579 and PPL695 and are the same age as the nearby oil/gas Eastern Papuan Basin (Elk/Antelope fields) and again a common reservoir play type in Southeast Asia.

Larus discovered and sampled an onshore oil seep just to the north of PPL579. Geochemical analysis has shown this to have been generated from a mature late Cretaceous to early Tertiary source rock analogous to that being modelled.