Hart energy interview with Brian SheffieldND: That's great to hear. That's really great to hear. Also too, you're kind of doing it, although it's even more pure-play wildcatting in Australia. Tell everyone about Tamboran [Resources]. Also, Tamboran went public just this summer on the New York Stock Exchange. It was public already in Australia, but it's public now on the New York Stock Exchange [and] can access a broader base of capital that way. Tell us about the prospect in Australia — it's actually more than a prospect; it's well proven now — but the operating environment there that makes it not just friendly, but extra-friendly to Tamboran.
BS: Well, you got to look back at the history. Before I even look at a play, I always want to know who were the previous buyers. That's what we’ve always done in business development for Parsley, now to Formentera. Why did they sell? How was it developed? And I know Santos has an acreage block and my father was on the board back in 2012- 2014. He kind of mentioned that to me that there's multi-stacked pay that could emerge in gas. Multiple Marcellus'es, multiple Haynesville's stacked on top of each other.
And I remember telling my father, "I'm not going to even look at that because I'm IPO’ing Parsely Energy." I have my blinders on. Two years later, I see [the] front page of Wall Street Journal: "Aubrey McClendon gets a farm-out in the Beetaloo." I could have beaten Aubrey McClendon. He'd beaten me in everything in Reagan County [Texas, in the Permian Basin].
So I'm so frustrated. He's always ahead and he always has his geologist and his technical staff. He's always had an edge on that. And then the play kind of just fizzled. They banned fracking, did some research for about a year, a moratorium, and then it kind of came back.
My No. 1 geologist, Tom Layman, who ran my geology group--he's that conservative geologist that comes in and talks to you about the play. You want to listen. And he doesn't talk about plays much. He comes in my office, he's retired, and he says, "I just saw some logs into this play." And I said, "Which one?" [He says], "In Australia."
And I was like, "Oh, don't tell me it's the Beetaloo." And he said, "Yeah, how do you know about it?" And so that's kind of how I got interested. And I started by buying some private-placement blocks in the micro-cap companies that have no leverage.
Tamboran, Falcon Oil & Gas and Empire Petroleum. There are three of them. You could buy Santos, but they have so many other assets inside the company. And then Joel Riddle, the CEO of Tamboran, came to me and he got the Origin Energy deal. Origin had the most and the best acreage in the basin. Origin is a public utility company that needed to sell out because of rioters picketing outside of the building: "Get out of fossil fuels."
So they sold at the wrong time. They had to sell it because they had some carry wells. They did not want to put the capex into it. It's not their fault, but they had to go and sell the company. No one bid. There were a couple of other larger companies that bid and I think they kind of stepped off of it. It fell in Joel's hands.
[Tamboran] was a micro-cap company. He needed to raise some money. I introduced him to some energy hedge funds, a couple of other long-only [funds]. He still needed short money and he kept extending the deal with Origin. And then I said, "I'll tell you what. I'll buy half the acreage with you and we'll do this together."
So we are a joint venture 50/50 with Tamboran. Tamboran has a couple other blocks that are pretty good also, so they have their own operation rights on those. But we are a joint venture on this large block. We drilled the well last May. Normalized for a 2-mile lateral because it was only a short lateral, it came in at 19 MMcf/d and it normalized at 2 miles. That's above a Marcellus well. It hung in there the entire time for 90 days. So we know it's there.
We're drilling two more wells now. And then once we show those data points in the same area--we already have the money--[Tamboran] needs to raise a little bit more money to pay for the gathering and compression to the local sales line. You're going to see sales first-quarter 2026. That's the key moment.
Also, Empire is going to get to sales probably in early 2026. So once these micro-cap companies start getting to sales, you're going to be able to see the long-life reserves in these wells. You can already see what's going to happen.
On the political environment, the Northern Territory has shifted from left to right, and it just happened a few weeks ago. They won by landslides. [It’s the] first time, it's happened in 20 years now.
The left minister was working with me. I met her; she wanted to get the gas. I think politics-wise, the entire country of Australia, from left to right, understands they need the gas. It's because the electricity bills across the entire country are five times [higher]. The gas bills are like 10 times and it's going to continue.
This field will answer all their problems with 20 to 30 wells because it's only 20 [million] to 30 million people.
The gravy on the entire field is the LNG price, with all these LNG facilities all over the country, they're running out of gas.
ND: And I understand the arrangement is simply that you have the government's complete support to pursue development at the Beetaloo. They just ask that your first gas satiate indigenous demand, Australia's domestic demand, then your excess can be exported.
BS: And we just signed a contract with the Northern Territory in Darwin to deliver this gas to the local market. They even have a natural gas task force. The government created one to help facilitate the Beetaloo. So that shows you how important it is to them.
I have met Alister [Trier, CEO of the Northern Territory department of mining and energy], in his office and he has a bell outside his office, a bell hanging on the wall waiting for the first sales of the Beetaloo. This is how important it is to them. They have a staff pushing this forward working with the traditional owners.
The traditional owners are, by the way, going to get a royalty in this. It's going to lift poverty. I have gone to the town of Elliot. I have gone to these other towns and seen how bad it is, and this is going to lift the poverty and there's a job creation waiting for them. I'm thinking from food trucks to pumpers to family trees that will pump these wells for the next 100 years. They're the ones that live there. They're the ones that are going to get the jobs.
https://www.hartenergy.com/exclusives/exclusive-sheffield-clears-air-formentera-not-just-pdp-buyer-210638