REGIONAL gas production company Beach Energy has enjoyed a buoyant end to the 2017/18 year, which it described as “transformational”.
The news comes ahead of the petroleum company’s “community consultation” sessions planned next week regarding its two proposed regional drilling programs.
The sessions will be held at Penola on Wednesday and Millicent on Thursday.
Beach has outlined plans to drill an additional conventional gas well near its Haselgrove-3 gas discovery and the multi-million-dollar construction of a new Katnook gas processing plant.
The new appraisal well – known as Haselgrove-4 – will be located about 7km south of Penola in close proximity to the existing network of Haselgrove wells.
The regional gas giant will also explore for gas at a new area about 20km north-west of Penola in bluegum plantations.
This conventional exploration project will be known as Dombey-1, which is part of the company’s regional expansion program.
In a statement released yesterday to the Australian Stock Exchange, Beach chief executive officer Matt Kay said production and sales had increased.
“The June quarter was one of heightened activity and success across the board and rounded out what has been a transformational year for Beach,” Mr Kay said.
“We were able to deliver a 10pc increase in production to 7.23 MMboe (million barrels of oil equivalent).
“In addition, we enjoyed a 7pc lift in overall realised product prices leading to our quarterly sales revenue reaching $471m, up 20pc from the prior quarter.”
In particular, Mr Kay said he was pleased the company had made “good progress” on optimising its future development program.
“During this quarter, we completed the review of our expanded portfolio and continued the successful integration of the Lattice assets into our company. Despite this period of transition, safety has remained the paramount focus,” he said.
“The strong performance of the integrated business is highlighted by improvements in free cash flow generation to $149m this quarter. This has been driven by lower capital expenditure and higher revenues.”
The company’s Otway Basin operations’ gross average daily production rate was up 12pc on the prior quarter.
Drilling activities for Dombey-1 and Haselgrove-4 are foreshadowed to begin late 2018 to early 2019.
Beach has also started the engineering design for a new 10 terajoule/day gas processing facility located at the existing Katnook Gas Plant, about 9km south of Penola.
The company was successful in being awarded a $6m Federal Government Gas Acceleration Program (GAP) grant to help finance the new gas processing plant.
In an earlier statement, Mr Kay said the new Katnook gas facility would provide much-needed processing capacity to supply local markets with the new gas discovered in the local area.
Beach will use the community information sessions to provide details on the new and revised statement of environmental objectives and environmental impact reports for drilling activities across the region and provide details around the planned new gas processing facility at Katnook.
The Penola community consultation session will be held at the John Riddoch Centre John Shaw Neilson Gallery at 27 Arthur Street from 10am to 6pm.
Meanwhile, the second session will be held at the Millicent Civic Centre, also between 10am and 6pm.
