Welcome back, everyone. Next, we have Empire Energy Australia. It trades on the ASX under the symbol EEG. It's an Australian oil and gas company headquartered in Sydney. The company holds 100% working interest in operatorship in approximately 28.9 million acres of petroleum exploration tenements across the McArthur Basin and its Beetaloo Sub-basin in the onshore Northern Territory of Australia. Happy to welcome its CEO and Managing Director, Alex Underwood. Welcome to the conference, Alex. Nice to see you.
Thank you very much, Anna. Great to be here from Sydney in Australia, and very excited to share with your viewers the very exciting story about Australia's Beetaloo Basin, which is, in my opinion, about to explode onto the global map with the entrance of some major US investors. This basin can be the solution to critical gas shortages in Australia and ultimately to provide energy security to the people of the broader region. Empire Energy Australia, as you mentioned, is listed on the ASX. We have a market cap of around AUD 200 million. We have around AUD 25 million cash in the bank.
Our share register is dominated by highly sophisticated upstream oil and gas investors, particularly investors in the unconventional field, so coal-seam methane investors or coal bed methane, as Americans refer to it, but also some very prominent US shale gas investors, including Brian Sheffield and Liberty Energy, whose support we greatly appreciate. Empire Energy Australia is focused on developing the Beetaloo Basin. The Beetaloo Basin is one of the largest shale gas resources on Earth, with over 500 trillion cubic feet of gas in place. This equates to around 300-400 years' worth of Australia's gas demand. It is a play that has incredible geological characteristics, analogous to the Marcellus Shale, which now produces around 25% of America's natural gas.
A unique feature of this basin is that the companies in this basin hold enormous acreage positions, numbering in the millions of acres, whereas typically in the US, you'd have acreage positions in tens or hundreds of thousands of acres. We hold all of our acreage with 100% working interest. We have had our resources assessed by Netherland Sewell, the most respected independent resource assessor in the industry, who have assessed that we have over 47 trillion cubic feet of prospective resource. That's around 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent. With very limited drilling, we have converted 1.6 TCF to 2C contingent resource, and we are working on demonstration of commercial viability, which would see that move to proved and probable reserves. Last year, we signed a 10-year gas sales agreement with the government of the Northern Territory in which we operate.
Gas prices in Australia are significantly higher than those in the United States, demonstrating a need for more supply. We are aiming to be the first company to move into production this year, with a scope to move to LNG scale next year. We have been very busy in the basin over the last five years, as it has started to emerge. We have drilled horizontal wells. We have flow tested those wells. We have converted prospective resource to contingent resource. Last year was a very busy year for us preparing to move into pilot production. We acquired a gas processing facility from a large Australian energy company. We executed that gas sales agreement with the Northern Territory Government, and we drilled our first full-scale horizontal well, Carpentaria-5H. That is an 11,000 ft horizontal section within the prolific Velkerri B Shale formation.
Subject to a sign-off from the Traditional Owners, with whom we have an existing agreement to move from exploration into production, we expect to install the gas plant later this year, following a very large fracture stimulation that we will be carrying out in a couple of months to move into gas sales. We have an enormous acreage position, as you mentioned, Anna, so we have 29 million acres under lease. This is a huge acreage position. Within the Beetaloo Basin itself, we are focused on the Carpentaria Project now, which is over 110,000 acres of contiguous prospective acreage. On the western side of the basin, we have over 1 million acres on that side of the basin, which contains multi-TCF resources. These shales are incredibly thick compared to typical US shales, which gives us significant resource to tap into as we drill.
It's what we call in the industry a stacked play, which means there are four prolific gas-bearing shale formations. They extend right across the basin. As you can see, compared to the Marcellus, these are very, very thick shales. The industry right now is focused on commercializing the B shale, with horizontal development drilling underway. Our gas is a very high-quality gas with low carbon dioxide. Every gas field in the world contains carbon dioxide. Ours is less than 1%, which is extremely low. It is also a relatively rich gas, which means it has a higher energy content than dry gas, which will result in a slightly better price.
This gas actually has a very similar composition to that of the Japanese domestic market, and we see that being a key market for us in years ahead, particularly given connections to existing LNG plants exporting gas out of Northern Australia and Eastern Australia. If we now move into the EP187 Carpentaria Project on the eastern side of the basin, we have carried out two seismic surveys. We have drilled two vertical wells, Carpentaria 1 and Carpentaria 4, and now we are in the horizontal appraisal phase. We have drilled up until late last year, we had drilled two shorter horizontal wells, Carpentaria 2H and Carpentaria 3H, and we have just finished the drilling of Carpentaria 5H, which I'll step you through. This has set us up to now move into what we call pilot production.
There is a 25 million cubic feet a day pipeline that traverses right through our tenement. That pipeline is owned by the Northern Territory Government. A connection into that pipeline has already been built for us by the NT government, and we will be installing the gas plant we acquired about 12 or 18 months ago at that connection point and tapping in our new well, Carpentaria 5H, and the two existing test wells, Carpentaria 2H and 3H. Carpentaria 5H was a tremendously successful well for us. It was the longest horizontal shale well ever drilled in Australian history. As you can see from the schematic on the top right, it was in formation for the entire 11,000-foot horizontal section, and we will be fracture stimulating that well in a couple of months' time.
We are very excited about moving into production, but the core goal of the program that we are carrying out is to demonstrate unequivocally the commercial viability of this project through demonstration of productivity. Drilling across this basin is accelerating rapidly. There was a moratorium preventing fracture stimulation from 2016 to 2018. The Northern Territory Government carried out an extensive independent scientific inquiry, which found that fracking could be carried out safely if adequately regulated. Those regulations are now in place. It was actually one of the only places in the world where a frack ban has been lifted, and we are now seeing significant activity occurring across the basin. When shale gas emerged in the United States, it took some thousands of wells to move productivity up to commercial rates.
We, in this basin, have been able to apply the incredible technological advances developed in the United States to the development of this basin, and we are starting to see very, very encouraging flow rates across the basin, driven by the quality of the resource, but also the application of those technological advancements. In our first couple of horizontal wells, we were carrying out a significant amount of research and development activities, which continue to this day, and we have identified opportunities for further productivity enhancement. In our first two horizontal wells, we demonstrated we could drill the long horizontal sections. That was in a smaller casing size, 4.5-inch casing. We have now increased that casing size to 5.5 inches and drilled an 11,000-foot lateral.
That will allow us to carry out bigger fracture stimulation jobs because there is a larger area for the water and sand to be pumped down the hole. As an example, in our first two wells, where Australia had very limited fracture stimulation horsepower available, we were able to pump down into the formation at around 40-50 barrels of fluid per minute. With the larger diameter casing and now with the increased frac horsepower available to us, we will be able to pump at rates of over double that, which, all other things being equal, should open up more rock and give us higher recovery. We have also made significant learnings around how to manage the flow back of these wells, which we believe will drive further productivity enhancements. As I mentioned, we have signed a 10-year binding gas sales agreement with the Northern Territory Government.
The Northern Territory gets around 95% of its electricity from gas. An existing field called Blackt ip was supplying all of that gas, and it has actually almost ceased producing. As a result, there is an urgent need from the Northern Territory Government to acquire gas from other operators. We, as a good corporate citizen of the Northern Territory, believe it is critical for us to ensure that the local market is supplied in this pilot phase, and we are very pleased to be able to sell this pilot gas to the Northern Territory to keep their energy market well supplied. I worked at Macquarie Bank, the largest Australian investment bank, for nearly 10 years from 2006 to 2015 in their oil and gas financing team. We have been delighted with the support that they have shown our company over the years.
In particular, just late last year, we entered into an AUD 65 million financing package with Macquarie Bank. This will finance the frac of the upcoming well and also the installation of our gas plant later this year, and we greatly appreciate their support. Critically, we as a company, having invested our own capital into the company, think like shareholders, and we are looking to minimize dilution of shareholders' interest in the company with everything we do. This Macquarie Bank facility really has been very helpful in that regard. While we are focused on getting gas into the Northern Territory market to ensure it is well supplied in the early phases, there is a crisis that has emerged on Australia's east coast in terms of gas supply. Just this morning, I was looking at the daily prices for gas out of the main hub of Wallumbilla.
An MCF of gas in Australia is currently trading at around AUD 14, which is equivalent to around $10. These are very, very high prices that are not good for our economy. It is also somewhat ironic given that Australia is one of the world's largest LNG exporters. There are plans being developed by APA Group, Australia's largest pipeline owner, the equivalent of Kinder Morgan in the US, who have publicly stated that they are looking to build a very large pipeline to connect into Australia's east coast. This will allow Australia to avoid significant gas shortfalls that are emerging in our east coast market and also ultimately to support further LNG export out of Gladstone. There is also an opportunity for significant increase in LNG export out of Darwin, which already supplies Japan with 11% of its total gas supply.
While we are focused on the pilot program, we are looking to establish a platform to significantly grow our production. The gas resource that we are sitting on will never be the constraining factor on the size of development we can carry out because we have tens of trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas. Our core strategy as a company at this phase is to demonstrate commercial viability. We believe that this is what will trigger the entry into the basin from major international companies and investors. We are seeing significant interest in this basin out of large oil and gas companies and some of the very large PE investors out of the United States. As I mentioned, ultimately, this can move to LNG scale. ESG is a very important part of our strategy. We have a very low CO2 gas resource.
As has been seen in the U.S., gas has half the carbon intensity of coal, and we've seen in the U.S., gas is now the predominant feedstock for electricity, and it's driving significant reductions in U.S. emissions intensity. Not only are the environmental effects of our project important, but also the social and governance aspects. We operate on Aboriginal land. We operate in partnership with the pastoralists, and we have been very grateful to receive their support based on many years of working closely in partnership. Government support for our industry is also very important in Australia. In the U.S., the minerals that sit below the ground are privately owned. In Australia, the minerals below the ground belong to the government. To that end, we have been delighted with the support of the primary regulator of our activities, the Northern Territory Government.
Here you can see a photo where I was visiting with their Chief Minister and their Resources Minister. They are unashamed supporters of this industry, and we have been very pleased to see just in recent weeks that they are looking to streamline approvals processes, remove obstacles to development, and really get this basin moving. For that support, we are deeply appreciative. In terms of the macro thematics around gas, you sometimes hear from activist groups that we do not need any more gas. That is simply not true. As I mentioned, the Northern Territory gas market is critically undersupplied. They need more gas supply to keep the lights on. Australia's east coast gas market has a yawning gap emerging between demand and supply.
Also, as the third box on this slide demonstrates from Shell's analysis, LNG demand is expected to continue growing strongly for decades to come. The Beetaloo is highly strategically located to the major demand centers for LNG, and as you can see on this map, we are as close as you can get to the major demand centers. This means that we have access to very, very strong gas markets into markets such as Japan, where gas prices trade at around four, sometimes even more times the price of US gas. This is going to be highly strategic for Asian energy security in the years ahead. In terms of our value proposition, our focus right now is on the Carpentaria Project, targeting first revenue and sales this year, developing our type curve so that we can demonstrate commercial viability.
We have all of the key pieces in place to carry out that program this year. Phase two would look like a project that could be around 8-10 times the production into Australia's east coast. Ultimately, this can be significant volumes into LNG export. Just to round up, 2024 was a highly successful year for us. We divested our remaining US assets to become a Beetaloo pure play. We raised AUD 46 million through the issuance of equity and the sale of a royalty to Brian Sheffield and Liberty. We executed a gas sales agreement with the NT government. We obtained all of our environmental approvals for this project. We drilled a very successful well and arranged financing. This year's program has four very clear goals.
One, carry out a successful fracture stimulation and well test of Carpentaria-5H, for which we expect to receive results in the coming months. Complete the indigenous sign-off process so that we can install the surface facilities and then commence gas sales. Anna, I might just pause there, and if you have any questions, I would be very happy to answer them. Wonderful.
Thank you, Alex. Sounds like the new Landman series will be in Australia.
Absolutely. I must say I love that show. It is a cracker.
Yes, I do too. It is really great. Talk a little bit about what conditions allow the resource to form and remain intact in the scale that it is.
Yeah, this is an incredible basin. Most gas formations around the world are from what we call source rocks that are around 300 million years old.
These source rocks are 1.4 billion years old, so around a billion years older than most petroleum formations around the world. What is incredible about that is that in geological time, as the continents moved around and moved into each other, a lot of those ancient gas formations were actually broken up and released into the atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago or longer. Australia as a continent moved away from other continents, and so this basin remained intact. That is really quite incredible because we have this formation that is extensive across the entire basin with incredible consistency of those geological formations and in the massive scale that I mentioned earlier.
Are Traditional Owners supportive of gas development like this, and what benefits could they achieve?
Absolutely. We have been working very closely with the Traditional Owners of the areas in which we operate.
In Australia, you are required to get the full and informed prior consent of Traditional Owners in accordance with the United Nations principles around these issues for your activities. We moved into this basin in 2011 under former leadership, and we worked very closely with the Traditional Owners for two and a half years to enter into a binding exploration agreement. We consult with them every year. We take them on site visits out to our sites. Furthermore, we are providing employment for Traditional Owners to assist us with these activities. Not only are there employment opportunities, but also there are royalty structures in place which are designed to give an economic benefit to the Traditional Owners on whose land we operate. From my perspective, there are two key reasons why it's important to work with Traditional Owners.
First of all, it's their land, and if we want to operate on their land, it's only right that we get their consent. Also, in Australia, our resources industry operates in very, very remote areas, and so often we rely on fly-in, fly-out workforces. That is an inherently expensive proposition for companies. We believe that it is beneficial for us from a business perspective to be training up and employing people who are locally based because they're ultimately connected to that area.
Absolutely. That's very good to hear. Alex, talk about some of the near-term opportunities to reduce drilling and the completion costs.
Certainly. In my investing career at Macquarie Bank, I remember investing both debt and equity in the early stage US shale plays.
In the early stages, it was very expensive because you'd bring a rig from another location to drill a single well, and then you had to set up all the infrastructure around water handling and sand and logistics for a single well. I remember back in those days, and this was probably 15 years ago, a typical shale gas well was costing around $15 million or $20 million. In some of these basins in the U.S., those costs have now come down by half or even two-thirds. Similarly, in the coal seam methane industry in Queensland and Australia's east coast, the first coal seam methane wells, which are smaller wells that produce less gas than shale, they were costing around AUD 5 million. Now they're down to AUD 1 million. We are in a similar situation in the Beetaloo. We brought a rig from around 1,500 mi away to our site.
We are transporting sand from around 2,000 mi away to our site. We are willing to incur those high costs in the early phase because our predominant driver is demonstration of productivity from these wells. Once we start moving into larger scale, there are enormous opportunities to reduce cost. This is what actually happened in the US shale industry. For example, 80%-90% of the cost of the sand that we pump down these wells is the cost of transporting it to site. We are surrounded by sand deposits that fit the specifications we require. We will soon be moving into developing our own sand mines. Similarly, when you hire a rig to drill multiple wells, the cost inherently comes down because you're not moving it thousands of miles each time you drill a well.
We will also be able to scale up our water handling operations to bring down the unit cost. We think we can get costs down by at least half, but potentially more with scale, as has been seen in other major unconventional gas developments globally.
You referenced this in your deck. Talk about the valuation per acre of Empire Energy Australia's leases, if you can.
Certainly. The dollar per acre value of our acreage and that of our neighbors in the basin, I think, is a major attraction to these significant US investors. We have 29 million acres under lease. Inside the Beetaloo, there are 1.1 million acres of surface acreage. Being a stacked play with multiple zones, there is a term in the industry called net effective acres, which takes into account the additional zones.
We've got around 3 million net effective acres inside the Beetaloo with a valuation of AUD 200 million. That's like AUD 65 an acre or around $40 an acre. By comparison, in major U.S. basins such as the Marcellus and the Permian, acreage values have soared to $5,000-$20,000 an acre. We see significant potential for running room on those valuations as we, as an industry, demonstrate that it's commercially viable.
How can investors learn more about the Beetaloo?
Certainly. There are operators like Empire Energy Australia. We have a website that people can look at. Also, just last weekend, one of the U.S. oil and gas digital platforms, Digital Wildcatters, actually released a 30-minute documentary on the Beetaloo.
They joined Brian Sheffield on a visit to Australia last year, and they brought a videographer and Chuck Yates, a well-known oil and gas figure, to interview a whole range of stakeholders. That was really about putting the Beetaloo Basin on the map. I would strongly recommend that anyone looking to get a holistic view of the basin go onto YouTube and look up Digital Wildcatters and Beetaloo and have a look at that video because it's an incredibly well put together video that can really give people a good understanding of the opportunity we have here.
Awesome. I'll do that myself. Alex, close with this. Just talk a little bit about your background and how you got introduced to Empire Energy Australia.
Yeah, sure. I think I'm a fifth-generation member of the mining industry.
My great-grandfather ran one of the world's richest silver lead and zinc mines in Burma, now known as Myanmar. My grandfather was a very well-known and respected mining figure. He worked at CRA, which is now Rio Tinto. He was actually the person who developed a copper mine in Papua New Guinea by the name of Bawdwin. It was the world's biggest copper deposit. I have always had a deep admiration and love of the extractive industries, which is really one of the core drivers of Australia's economy. It was really the 10 years that I spent at Macquarie Bank focused on upstream oil and gas, where I learned about the incredible value creation opportunity of shale gas. Empire was actually one of my clients for many years.
I've decided to jump out of the finance industry and into the actual oil and gas industry because I just see an incredible opportunity to not only create a hell of a lot of value for our shareholders, but also to provide Australia and the broader region with energy security.
Fascinating backstory. Besides running this company, you should write a book about your family one day.
Absolutely. I think we're a bit busy at the moment building the company. Yeah, maybe down the track we could do that.
Wonderful. It's been a pleasure having you on the conference. We're happy to have you and look forward to following you along with your journey with some future updates. Thank you so much, Alex.
Thank you, Anna. Great to speak.
All right, everyone. We'll be right back.