Australis' main asset is the US shale patch, where it holds swathes of onshore acreage in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale across Louisiana and Mississippi. 

So it was little wonder the company's share price tanked from highs of 9.5 cents before the oil price crash, to lows of 0.7c by the end of the first quarter. 

That's a 1357% fall one quarter alone. 

Its price was hit last week when US onshore benchmark West Texas Intermediate went into unprecedented negative territory, but has recovered slightly. 

Over the past month West Texas crude fell from the teens into negative territory, at one stage as low as minus -$38/bbl. It has since recovered to the mid-teens and was trading at $17/bbl at 1.30 this afternoon.  

In its latest quarterly the company showed how swiftly it had acted since the market crashed, significantly reducing its debt position, restructuring facilities and making deep cuts to capital expenditure. 

Early this month the company paid off US$10 million worth of debt, leaving it with a debt balance of US$23 million. It currently has around US$4 million cash on hand. 

Australis cut costs wherever it could, operational expenditure was slashed as was discretionary capital expenditure. 

While the company has not given an exact figure on the total cash spending cut, it did say the cost of production per barrel had been cut from $13/bbl to below $9/bbl. 

Management acted quickly to terminate an undrawn facility worth US$40 million and eliminate associated fees. 

As expected, oil sales volumes cratered amid an oversupplied market, with gross sales volumes for the first quarter just 170,000 barrels of oil - about 40,000 barrels lower than analysts had expected.  

Over the three months, Australis sold its oil at an average of US$49/bbl, about $3/bbl higher than RBC Capital Markets analyst Ben Wilson anticipated. 

He said RBC's fundamental view was the company's challenges were "not bound by its operations but rather extend to the broader US shale patch where a dearth of available storage capacity has driven down realised pricing." 

While current oil production is still providing some cash flow, largely due to the company's short-term hedging position, funding for any forward program would be "increasingly challenging" and would probably require a farm-down of assets.

"The introduction of a partner to the basin potentially would provide some external validation of Australis' positive take on the prospectivity of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale acreage," Wilson said. 

"We do think the basin has longer-term strategic merit to a major looking to slide a new, discrete contiguous play into a much larger portfolio… near term however, oil pricing will remain key." 

RBC has revised its outlook for the company to "Sector Perform".