News & Media releases
Shell secures new deepwater acreage in the Carnarvon Basin
05/07/2005
Perth, 5th July, 2005 - Shell Development Australia (Shell) has been awarded exploration rights to four deepwater blocks in the Carnarvon Basin offshore Western Australia, in which Shell will have a 50 percent interest. Chevron will be the operator of all four permits.
The permit areas, WA-364-P, WA-365-P, WA-366-P & WA-367-P, are located on the Exmouth Plateau, 160 to 480-km northwest of the Western Australian coastline. The Plateau is the deep-water frontier of the Carnarvon basin, Australia's premier petroleum basin, which includes the North West Shelf and Greater Gorgon resources.
Chairman of the Shell Companies in Australia, Tim Warren, said: "Shell is delighted to have secured this acreage. Australia is an important part of Shell's regional and global growth ambitions for gas. Shell is a global leader in LNG and a long-term player in Australia. We are keen to add more integrated gas to our portfolio and are looking to discover more gas around the LNG hubs where we already have a presence, eg: Gorgon, Browse, Sunrise and the Timor Sea.
"We believe these two technically strong and successful companies form an ideal partnership to unlock the potential of the area.
"The planned 3D seismic and drilling programme will exploit the comprehensive deepwater gas experience that the two companies can bring to bear," Mr Warren said.
Notes to Editors
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, "the Group", is a diverse group of energy companies with operations in around 140 countries. The Group's businesses include oil and gas exploration and production; power generation; manufacturing, marketing and shipping of oil products and chemicals and renewable energy projects including wind and solar power. The Group's parent companies are Royal Dutch Petroleum Company which has a 60% interest in the Group and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc which has a 40% interest in the Group. Shares in the parent companies are traded on stock exchanges in Europe and the US. On 28 October 2004 Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport and Trading announced proposals for their unification under a single company, Royal Dutch Shell plc, with one Board of Directors. For further information, visit http://www.shell.com
Disclaimer statement
This announcement contains forward-looking statements, that are subject to risk factors associated with the oil, gas, power, chemicals and renewables business. It is believed that the expectations reflected in these statements are reasonable, but may be affected by a variety of variables which could cause actual results, trends or reserves replacement to differ materially, including, but not limited to: price fluctuations, actual demand, currency fluctuations, drilling and production results, reserve estimates, loss of market, industry competition, environmental risks, physical risk, risks associated with the identification of suitable potential acquisition properties and targets and the successful negotiation and consummation of transactions, the risk of doing business in developing countries, legislative, fiscal and regulatory developments including potential litigation and regulatory effects arising from recategorisation of reserves, economic and financial market conditions in various countries and regions, political risks, project delay or advancement, approvals and cost estimates.
Please refer to the Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2004 for a description of certain important factors, risks and uncertainties that may affect the Companies' businesses. Neither of the Companies undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether to reflect new information, future events or otherwise.
Cautionary Note to US Investors:
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission ('SEC') permits oil and gas companies, in their filings with the SEC, to disclose only proved reserves that a company has demonstrated by actual production or conclusive formation tests to be economically and legally producible under existing economic and operating conditions. We use certain terms in this presentation, such as "expected producible resources" and "amount of reserves we expect to produce", that the SEC's guidelines strictly prohibit us from including in filings with the SEC.