Senex Energy will have the confidence to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in SA after a landmark agreement with the State Government SENEX Energy will be able to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in SA now that it has locked in its exploration tenements for 15 years, the company says. Senex has struck a deal to bring the majority of its Cooper Basin petroleum exploration tenements into a new agreement, which puts an initial five year time frame on their exploration obligations. Previously the company had varying time frames for each tenement, meaning that exploration was not necessarily done efficiently, Senex managing director Ian Davies said. Mr Davies said as an example, if you had a tenement which expired in 18 months, and there had been little exploration done, it would not be worth doing early stage exploration, as the tenement would then run out before you could progress it further. Mr Davies said this system drove "inefficient investment." "We had 12 petroleum exploration licences, all with different exploration dates," he said. When you think to do seismic (exploration) and drill wells you're talking two to three years, if you've got a permit that finishes in 18 months you're not going to spend any money there. What this agreement does is allows us to spend money efficiently and get the best bang for the buck both for us and the State. The new agreement meant the company could assess its whole portfolio and do exploration in a methodical, strategic manner. When a company goes to invest significant amount of money and in our view hundreds of millions is significant money, what you need is regulatory certainty and from an oil and gas perspective tenure certainty. What this arrangements does for us is it gives us both of those things. Mr Davies said the company had put a lot of work into the tenements over the past three years but it could now accelerate exploration. Senex will be obliged to spend $4500 per square kilometre per year over an initial area of 9753sq/km and the scheme will be reviewed after the first five years. Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said it was a good outcome. The hundreds of millions of dollars to be invested by Senex will inevitably create jobs not only in the Cooper-Eromanga Basin, but in Adelaide and elsewhere in South Australia," he said. Many local enterprises will also have an opportunity to benefit by providing equipment and services to these exploration and development projects. Senex shares closed 5.1 per cent higher at 72.5c yesterday.