Statoil has farmed into Petrofrontier's four existing Exploration Permits (EP 103, 104, 127 and 128) as well as pending exploration permits (213 and 252) in the South Georgina Basin in Australia's Northern Territories in a Joint Venture project.

This is an early entry at scale into over 13 million acres of immature, but potentially highly prospective play at low cost, with high risk but also with significant upsides.

Through a step-wise exploration programme the partners will potentially drill 10-20 wells by 2017 in three phases to demonstrate prospectivity.

Petrofrontier will operate the first phase of the programme while Statoil has secured options to operate from the second exploration phase in addition to increase ownership interests from 25 to 65% of Petrofrontier's interests.

Tags: Statoil