Pacific Oil & Gas Pty. Ltd., Box Hill, Victoria, Australia, plans to shoot additional seismic lines and drill more wells this dry season in the McArthur basin of far northern Australia, says the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Canberra.

Pacific's 1 Jamison stratigraphic test encountered a minor flow of good quality oil and gas late last year.

Well site is at 16 27' 10" S. Lat and 133 46' 45" E. Long.

The well flowed gas at the rate of 16 Mcfd on a drillstem test at 2,841-3,053 ft. Recovery was 61/2 ft of oil and 1,470 ft of oil- and gas-cut formation water.

The Pacific 1 Jamison is about 300 km southwest of BMR's 4 Urapunga, where the agency discovered what it believes to be the world's oldest oil while drilling to collect samples for analysis in 1985.

Pacific has been mapping the surface and subsurface distribution of rocks at the same stratigraphic level as the Proterozoic rocks of the Roper group that yielded the oil in BMR's 4 Urapunga. Roper group rocks are about 1.4 billion years old.

BMR has summarized the results of its investigations in a publication, Record 1987/48, available from the agency in Canberra.

TRACKING PROTEROZOIC OIL

Arafura basin sediments unconformably overlie the Proterozoic McArthur basin, the BMR's John Bradshaw, Robert S. Nicoll, and Marita Bradshaw wrote in a paper published in the Australian Petroleum Exploration Association Journal in 1990.

The paper notes that the Proterozoic McArthur basin sequence onshore has recorded recovery of live oil and total organic carbon contents as high as 7.2% in the Velkerri formation of the Middle Proterozoic Roper group.

Velkerri is interpreted as a marine shale.

It is notable, they wrote, that in the late Proterozoic, northern Australia and Oman were located along the northern margin of Gondwana facing onto the Tethyan ocean.

The late Proterozoic in Oman has sourced 12 billion bbl of oil reserves.

Pacific, a subsidiary of CRA Exploration Pty. Ltd., conducts unconventional oil exploration of Precambrian basins as one of its main areas of emphasis.

BMR, meanwhile, has developed strong links the past 2 years with the Omani Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals.

BMR this year one a contract with the Sultanate of Oman to supervise a geophysical mapping program over the Batinah coastal region near the Omani capital Muscat and a smaller area inland near Hayl Assafil.

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