The WA-226-P joint venture, operated by Origin Energy, is preparing to drill a well on the 100 million barrel potential Fiddich prospect as early as May this year and a slot on the floating drilling rig Sedco 703 has already been secured for this purpose.

Voyager plans to retain a total 10% interest in the project through the drilling of the well. In order to offset its drilling cost exposure the company is also advanced in negotiations to assign 5% of the interest acquired from Dana to a third party, linked to farmout by Voyager of 5% interests in each of licences WA-325-P and WA-327-P on trend to the south.

When complete, these transactions will result in Voyager having 10% interests across these three large licences in which many undrilled structures additional to the Fiddich prospect have already been identified.

"We have been trying for some time to increase our equity and therefore leverage to any success in this project," said Voyager managing director John Begg.

"It is an important part of our program to balance our portfolio in the lead up to a multi-well drilling program this year, with prospects selected using the 3D seismic we acquired last year."

"We believe this licence has real quality and hope to emulate our performance of making oil discoveries in each of the other licences we acquired by the farmin method," said Begg.

Participants in the fields include Origin Energy (Operator) 28.75%, Apache Energy 28.75% Dana Petroleum 20%, Voyager Energy 15% and Norwest Energy 7.5%.