What is changing?

On 16 April 2021 ASX released its consultation paper concerning Proposed changes to the oil and gas reporting requirements in the ASX Listing Rules (“CP”), and on 22 October 2021 released its response to consultation.

Following this consultation process, on 25 May 2022, ASX confirmed that amendments were being made to the ASX Listing rules and Listing Rules Guidance Note 32 Reporting on Oil & Gas Activities (“GN 32”)

ASX has received regulatory clearance for the attached amendments to Chapter 5 and Chapter 19 of the ASX Listing Rules (“Rules”). 

Summary of Rule amendments

The reporting requirements for oil and gas production and exploration activities in Chapter 5 of the ASX Listing Rules and the associated definitions in ASX Listing Rule 19.12 (together, the “Rules”) are based on upon the 2007 edition of the SPE-PRMS.

These Rule amendments give effect to changes made in 2018 to the Petroleum Resources Management System sponsored by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the World Petroleum Council and the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers (“SPE-PRMS”) and to address certain other issues.

The Rule amendments include:

• changes to the Rules governing the public reporting of petroleum resources generally for consistency with the 2018 update to the SPE-PRMS, including changes:

o   addressing the sub-classification of petroleum reserves;

o   clarifying that the requirement to report petroleum resources net of royalty quantities only applies to contractual royalties;

o   requiring estimates of petroleum reserves, contingent resources and prospective resources to be reported in the appropriate units (BOEs or McfGEs) for each individual product type reported;

o   requiring the reporting of reserves estimates to be supported by a high degree of confidence in the commerciality of the project and evidence of the economic producibility of the reservoir; and

o   requiring petroleum reserves to be reported as sales quantities at the reference point, subject to a qualification that quantities of petroleum to be consumed in operations (CiO) may be included as petroleum reserves provided these quantities are reported separately to, and have equal prominence with, sales quantities;

• changes to the reporting requirements for material oil and gas projects for consistency with the 2018 update to the SPE-PRMS, including changes:

o   amending and expanding the criteria for commerciality in accordance with the changes in SPE-PRMS section 2.1.2;

o   for unconventional petroleum projects, requiring the proposed extraction method and any additional processing required before sale to be identified; and

o   for reporting of contingent resources, requiring the inclusion of the entity’s assessment of the chance of development associated with the reported estimates of contingent resources;

• changes to the annual reporting requirements for oil and gas entities for consistency with the 2018 update to the SPE-PRMS, including a change requiring an entity with material petroleum reserves that have not been developed for 5 or more years to include a statement in the entity’s annual report of “any work the entity is proposing to undertake towards development of the undeveloped petroleum reserves”;

• adding the following new Rules

o   new Rule 5.27.5 setting out the information disclosure requirements for an entity reporting forecast financial information derived solely or partly from an estimate of economically not viable contingent resources;

o   new Rule 5.28.3 to impose the same prohibition on the disclosure of a mean estimate of prospective resources as is imposed in relation to petroleum reserves and contingent resources in Rules 5.26.6 and 5.27.2;

o   new Rules 5.28.4 and 5.28.5 to impose the same constraints on aggregation of prospective resources as are imposed on petroleum reserves and contingent resources in Rules 5.26.7, 5.26.8, 5.27.3 and 5.27.4;

o   new Rule 5.28.6 to prohibit an entity from reporting forecast financial information derived from an estimate of prospective resources;

• amending Rule 5.30 requiring an entity publicly reporting material exploration and drilling results in relation to petroleum resources to include in its report, if flow rates were tested, information about the pressures associated with the flow and the duration of the test;
• consequential amendments to the definitions in Chapter 19 of the Rules, including deleting the definitions of ‘lease fuel’ and ‘reference point’ and inserting new definitions of ‘US oil and gas reserves statement’ and ‘SEC’.

Amendments to GN 32

As noted on 25 May 2022, ASX has also prepared an update to GN 32 to reflect the final changes to the Listing Rules and address some of the issues raised in consultation submissions. A mark-up of these updates is available here

What do I need to do by when?

The amendments to the Rules and GN32 are effective from 1 July 2022.

Need more information?

Issued by

Janine Ryan
Chief Compliance Officer

Contact information

Janine Ryan
Chief Compliance Officer
+61 (02)  9227 0497
Janine.Ryan@asx.com.au

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