The deviated Hovea-3 well is attempting to establish a greater production interval than the eight metres encountered in the initial discovery last year.

Currently the partners are cutting core a few hundred metres before the estimated target formation, which they expect to encounter in the next few days.

With the Perth Basin often within mobile phone coverage, ARC are keen to prevent any unreleased information leaking out to the market and last week managing director Eric Streitberg said he would probably seek to suspend the stock as crunch time looms.