"We've got interested parties looking at all the technical information," he said during a visit to Darwin. Mr Bruner, the son of a Texas oilman, freely admits he faces a big challenge in proving that it is technically possible to extract the oil and gas profitably.
An independent report by major international resources analyst Ryder Hunt says that Beetaloo - a 30,000sq km tract of land surrounding Daly Waters, 600km south of Darwin - holds 19 billion barrels of oil and 63 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. That's five times more gas than the $12billion offshore Inpex project.
Mr Bruner said Beetaloo could one day be producing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day. "This could change the face of Australia," he said. Mr Bruner said it had been known for a long time that oil and gas was held in shale. But it was only recently that the technology was developed to bring it to the surface. There are several big shale oil and gas operations in the United States. Mr Bruner said he was confident US technology would work in Australian geological conditions.
He said the oil and gas was held in shale and sand - much of it very thick and some of it much richer than world-class fields in America. "For sure the oil is there, for sure the gas is there. So it's not a question of what we've found, but a question of whether we can produce it commercially."
Mr Bruner, the former boss of Ultra Petroleum, added: "Oil is in my blood. And this is the biggest thing I've ever found. "There's nothing like it onshore - and maybe not even offshore." Falcon owns 75 per cent of the exploration permits and its partner, Sweetpea Petroleum, 25 per cent.
Source: NTNews
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