NWest Energy extends exploration licenses offshore western newfoundland

NWest Energy Corp. announces that the Company has elected to extend Period I of each of offshore Exploration Licenses 1097 and 1098 to January 15, 2012 by posting a drilling deposit in the amount of $250,000 for each license with the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. Failure to drill or spud a well before the expiry date of Period I of a license will result in the license reverting to the Crown and forfeiture of the drilling deposit for the license. The Licence extension allows the Company to keep its large acreage position (1.6 million acres) intact to further pursue potential partners and evaluate other potential unconventional plays that may emerge in western Newfoundland. The Company also owns the two contiguous Exploration Licences 1103 and 1104 which are in good standing until January 15, 2012. All of the licences are eligible for Period II of up to an additional 4 years for those licences upon which a well is drilled. These wells may consist of onshore to offshore drilling to test near shore targets. 
Nalcor Energy has announced that it has encountered natural gas in the first two wells of a three well onshore program at Parsons Pond. The northern portion of the NWest lands are immediately adjacent to the Parsons Pond area. Also, Shoal Point Energy Ltd. has announced a drilling program for an unconventional oil shale play in the Port au Port area in rocks similar to those contained in the shallow near shore portions of the NWest lands. It may be possible to exploit these shales on NWest lands from drilling sites onshore. An evaluation of this unconventional play is underway.
The Company's lands cover a portion of the offshore Anticosti Basin adjacent to the west coast of Newfoundland and contain a prospective sequence of Cambrian-Ordovician platform rocks overlain by an untested foreland basin. The exposed onshore stratigraphy contains mature oil source rocks, (Green Point shale with up to 10% total organic carbon) including numerous oil and gas surface seeps at Parsons Pond and a light oil discovery onshore at Port au Port. Several seismically defined leads and prospects exist on Company lands. A National Instrument 51-101 compliant Resource Assessment Report completed by Sproule Associates Limited concluded that "the 11 most significant geophysical anomalies herein considered as forming the initial exploratory drilling phase of NWest's ongoing program may have an undiscovered in place resource in the order of 3.8 billion barrels."
The Company continues to solicit partners to capitalize on this light oil potential. 
Source: Press release