At 6am (CSST) this morning, the company was rigging down the rig and equipment in preparation for spudding the Pine-1 exploration well by the end of the week.

Aspen-1 was the first well to be drilled under July’s farm-in agreement between Innamincka and Canada’s Avery Resources to three blocks in the permit.

Avery funded part of the well costs to earn a 25% interest in the Aspen farmout block, a 55 square kilometre area in the south-eastern part of PEL 103 and about 8km northeast of the Cummin-1 drilled in 2004.

The Aspen prospect was an anticlinal structure on the broad Innamincka High - the largest structural culmination in the Cooper and Eromanga Basins, the company said in an earlier report.

Cummin-1 was the third well drilled on the Innamincka High to explore for a crestal hydrocarbon accumulation. Very encouraging oil shows were reported throughout the Eromanga section in addition to a small oil discovery, Innamincka said.

The first two wells – Innamincka-3 and 4 drilled in the early 1980s - also had encouraging oil shows, but failed to intersect an economic oil accumulation.

Participants in PEL 103 are: Vernon E Faulconer Australia (65%); Innamincka Petroleum (operator - 35%); Avery Resources (0% - farming in for 25% working interest subject to farmin agreement terms).