BRISBANE – The oil industry has already been turned on its head by the incredible resurgence of American oil production, but one Australian company thinks it might have hit on an even bigger prize. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Brisbane, Australia-based Linc Energy has stumbled across what, at least by the current optimistic projections, could be one of the single largest deposits of oil in the world. Linc owns rights to more than 25,000 square miles of the Arckaringa Basin in the central region of South Australia, far to the northwest of Adelaide. After drilling saw some success in the Cooper Basin in the northeastern part of the province, exploration began in the Arckaringa in 2008. Five years later, the company announced that two independent energy consulting firms have backed up its conclusions that the basin could hold one of the largest shale oil deposits in the world, pegging total reserves at somewhere between 103 billion and 233 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That tops most estimates for the Athabasca oil sands deposits in Alberta, Canada, broadly considered the third-largest oil reserve in the world. “If you stress test it right down and you only took the very sweetest spots in the absolute known areas and you do nothing else, it's about 3.5 billion [barrels] and that's sort of worse-case scenario,” Peter Bond, CEO of Linc Energy, told the news source. “So if you took the 233 billion, well, you're talking Saudi Arabia numbers. It's massive, it's just huge. “What it could do is really turn this thing into the next boom, so where you saw coal-bed methane transform Queensland and the gas industry, shale could and I think will transform South Australia and a potential oil boom.” – AgenciesIn addition to the potential difficulties with the drilling itself, Rigzone reports that Linc could face opposition to the use of fracking itself. Australia has seen a boom in gas production in New South Wales and Queensland thanks to the use of fracking to tap shale and coal seam gas reserves. However, strong concerns about water safety, particularly for coal seam gas, has led to numerous protests and increasing public pressure. The Arckaringa Basin, while quite a ways from any significant population centers, overlaps with one national park and lies near some important water resources. Especially if exploration proves to be less successful or more expensive than initially anticipated, there is some concern that public opposition to fracking as a whole could limit opportunities in South Australia. — Agencies
