Australian offshore oil exploration company, Carnarvon Petroleum, has acquired new acreage offshore Western Australia.

Carnarvon said on Monday it has bought a 100 percent stake in the WA-523-P block in the Timor Sea, expanding its acreage at the North West Shelf (NWS) by more than 4000 square kilometers.

Carnarvon’s Managing Director and CEO, Adrian Cook, said the new acreage has a tremendous opportunity and is an important addition to the company’s portfolio, which could fulfill Carnarvon’s strategic intent of finding and commercializing major oil and gas resources on the North West Shelf.

“Without a doubt, the mapped prospectivity in this proven oil province, and within the permit, has outstanding development potential. We believe we can generate significant shareholder value by applying cutting edge seismic imaging technologies which have recently proven successful in our Phoenix permits,” Cook said.

The work program over the new block entails reprocessing existing 3D seismic data and interpretation and analysis of data within the initial three-year term.

The company said that it has already initiated the reprocessing work which will take around 12 months to complete. If successful, Carnarvon said that it may at its discretion acquire new 3D data and drill a well over the course of the following three years.

The company further said it now has a total of 35,000 square kilometers of acreage in the NWS (around 18,700 square kilometers net to Carnarvon). This new permit adds a further 4,220 square kilometers located in the northernmost part of Western Australian waters.

The WA-523-P block includes the Buffalo Oil Field and the undeveloped oil discoveries in the Bluff-1 and Buller-1 wells. The permit is in the proximity of proven oilfields at Laminaria, Corallina, Kitan, Jahal, and Kuda Tasi that collectively contain approximately 280 mmbbl. In total, within 40 kilometers around the permit, there is an estimated 730 million barrels of oil and 3.4 Tcf of gas present.

Carnarvon said that the Buffalo field may be an interesting re-development opportunity in the future since it produced 20 million barrels of high quality oil and was flowing around 4,000 barrels a day when operations ceased in 2004.

Both Bluff-1 and Buller-1 may, according to the company, also prove significant as well if the imaging reveals volumetric upside.