QGC's Berwyndale-9 well has increased production to 818,000 cfd and Argyle-11 has soared to 1,000,000 cfd. Driven by these results, QGC’s share price has more than doubled since the New Year and closed at 51 cents yesterday.

QGC managing director Richard Cottee said each cubic foot of gas per day produced by a well would earn the producer about a dollar per year. So Argyle’s million cubic feet per day equals about a million dollars per year income for QGC from that well alone.

The success of these recently completed wells indicates the company’s fine-tuning of its well completion model is paying dividends, he said.

Coal-bed methane is a new industry in Australia and QGC’s work in the Surat Basin of inland south Queensland is breaking new ground, so to some extent the company has had to make it up as it went along.

“Developing our assets has been very much a matter of trial and error,” Cottee said.

“Argyle-11 is the only one correctly configured from the start. We are now upgrading the pumps and motors on our other wells and you’ll see their production increase dramatically soon.

“Now that we have cracked the code and worked out how to get the optimal amount of gas out per well, we can only improve from here. It’s now fairly low risk and we are getting payback on wells within five months.”