The WA-260-P airborne laser fluorosensor (ALF) survey was flown by World Geoscience in the Timor Sea in October 1997 for BHP Petroleum and joint venture partners using the ALF MkIII system. The survey was designed to detect natural oil seepage over the permit in an effort to refine the petroleum prospectivity assessment.
The survey covers a triangular area over the northern two thirds of the permit and extends about 60km north to south and nearly 50km east to west at its widest section in the south.
This report is a re-interpretation of the World Geoscience data by Signalworks Pty Ltd using the ALF Explorer software. A total of 285 fluorescence anomalies (fluors) were picked out of the 1,751,550 recorded spectra in the final interpretation. This is an average fluor density of 0.16 fluors per thousand spectra.
The fluor distribution across permit WA-260-P is relatively uniform, with no strong oil seepage patterns evident. A possible band of more intense fluors lies on an E-W trend to the south of the Buller-1 and Cleia-1 wells.
The scattered distribution of detected fluors may be an indication of a working petroleum system. The known accumulations covered by the survey do not directly correspond with distinct clustering of fluors.