Queensland Consolidated Acts Queensland Consolidated Acts(1) Subject to subsection (5), a holder of an authority to prospect may, by signed writing, apply to the Minister for the grant to the applicant, or to the applicant and other qualified persons nominated by the applicant, of a lease or leases of such area of land as is reasonably required to develop and produce payable deposits of petroleum within the land the subject of the authority to prospect.
(1A) The right to apply under subsection (1) applies only to the extent that the area of the proposed lease is not in the area of a coal or oil shale mining tenement, a GHG authority or a geothermal tenure.
Editor's note—
See the 2004 Act, chapter 15, part 3, division 4 (Transition, by application, from 1923 Act ATP to petroleum lease under this Act).
(2) If the applicant and any other persons nominated by the applicant are qualified persons and the applicant—
(a) declares that deposits of petroleum that the applicant believes on reasonable grounds to be payable have been discovered within the land the subject of the application; and
(b) lodges with the Minister a proposed program for developing and producing petroleum from any field within the land;
the applicant is entitled to have a lease granted to the applicant and the other persons (if any) nominated by the applicant.
(3) On compliance with subsection (2), the relevant land is taken, for the purposes of subsection (1), to contain payable deposits of petroleum capable of development and production.
(4) A lease is to be granted by the Governor in Council.
(4A) The lease can not have a term of more than 30 years.
(5) The lands in respect of which a lease is granted under subsection (4)—
(a) shall not exceed 260km2 in area; and
(b) unless otherwise approved by the Governor in Council shall be bounded by boundaries which are a rectilinear figure the sides whereof (which may be of any number) are formed by parts of meridians of longitude and by chords, each subtending a minute of arc, of parallels of latitude and described by whole minutes of latitude and longitude; and
(c) shall be described and marked on a plan in such manner that they can be readily identified.
(6) The Governor in Council may, if in the Governor in Council's opinion the special circumstances of the particular case render it necessary or desirable so to do, approve that lands which are not contiguous may be included in one lease.
(7) The applicant for the lease shall, when and as required by the Minister, and may at the applicant's option (but in either case at the applicant's own expense) survey and mark upon the ground, in accordance with the relevant regulations, all or any portion of the boundaries of the lease.
(8) When such survey and marking is accepted as correct by the Minister, the boundaries or portion of the boundaries as so marked shall be the boundaries or, as the case may be, that portion of the boundaries of the lease.
(9) This section expires on 1 November 2021.