Addressing the Good Oil conference in Fremantle, Nelson said the company's next high-impact well will be the Australian Worldwide Exploration-operated Kopuwai-1 in the offshore Taranaki Basin, New Zealand.

Back in Australia, Beach intends to follow up its success in the Gippsland Basin's Basker Manta Gummy (BMG) project with high-reward exploration in Bass Strait's other two basins - the Otway and the Bass.

Beach's Bass Basin acreage was acquired only last month when the company farmed into the T-38P and T-39P permits held by privately-owned Malaysian company Benaris Energy.

Beach is earning an 80% stake in a defined block within the T-38P permit, by partly paying to drill the Spikey Beach-1 exploration well in the second half of next year.

Also at this time, the company will participate in drilling the Peejay-1 well in T-39P, in return for a 50% stake in the entire permit.

The two permits lie in the south-central portion of the Bass Basin in water depths of less than 100m, Nelson said.

The wells will test the oil potential of two relatively simple structural traps at the top of the Eastern View coal measures on the basin's southern flank.

Beach has assessed the Spikey Beach and Peejay prospects to potentially contain up to 33 and 57 million barrels of recoverable oil, respectively.

Spikey Beach has a 27% chance of success; the depth to target is 1450m and the planned total depth is 2000m.

Peejay has a 20% chance of success; the depth to target is 1340m and the planned total depth is 2600m.

"The Bass Basin has a similar hydrocarbon system to the Gippsland basin where we have our BMG project," Nelson said.

"Our Bass permits are near the basin's edge, which is oil-prone. They are 50 kilometres offshore and can be developed either by a pipeline to shore or by an FPSO."

In the Otway, Beach has teamed up with minnow Essential Petroleum. The two companies hold 50% each in the Vic P-46 lease, where they say the Fermat prospect has the potential to be twice the size of the nearby Casino gas field.

"Fermat could hold more than 1200 petajoules [1.14 trillion cubic feet] of gas," Nelson said.

A commercial gas discovery would have a distribution outlet through a grid connection to the main SEAGAS pipeline north of Portland, or to the eastern states network via existing connections around Warrnambool, he said.

Success would also bring natural gas into commercial consideration for heavy industry in the Green Triangle region in far southwest Victoria and the far south of South Australia, which can be stretched in sourcing sufficient and stable energy feedstock supplies, according to Nelson.