Australia finds more gas for home and abroad

Santos’ discovery of a sizeable gas column in the Northern Carnarvon Basin should boost the NWS venture’s expansion plans

The relatively surprising find, announced by Australian independent Santos in April, has the potential to support both LNG exports through the North West Shelf (NWS) project and domestic supply into the burgeoning Western Australian (WA) market. The gas column was discovered during appraisal drilling at the Corvus-2 well and inherited by Santos when it acquired smaller rival Quadrant Energy in a friendly takeover deal last year. The column lies adjacent to the substantial shallow-water Dorado oil find—the third largest oil discovery in WA's history when Quadrant found it in 2018. The story goes that Santos was doing a quick appraisal, plug and abandon exercise at Corvus-2 before diverting th