In late September 2024, Madeline King, the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, granted two production licenses to Beach Energy over the Artisan and La Bella fields in the offshore Otway Basin.
Both VIC/L35 (Artisan) and VIC/L36 (La Bella) will be valid for the life of the fields with production to be tied back to the Otway Gas Project.
Gas is currently supplied to the domestic market through the Project from six fields; the near to shore Black Watch, Enterprise, Halladale and Speculant, and the deeper water Geographe and Thylacine.
Both discoveries are expected to be appraised as part of Beach’s “Offshore Gas Victoria Drilling Program”, which will also include plug and abandonment of Geographe 1 and Thylacine 1 and the drilling of up to six exploratory wells in the Otway Basin, likely including the Hercules (located between Artisan and Labella) and Mavis (south of Thylacine) prospects.
The awards were made under the Australian Government’s “Future Gas Strategy”, announced in May 2024 – the strategy is based around six principles, one of which is that new sources of gas supply will be needed to meet demand during the economy-wide transition and that Government policies to enable natural gas exploration and development should focus on optimizing existing discoveries and infrastructure in producing basins.
