They are the Lake Long project in south Louisiana, and a second phase of drilling at the Margarita gas project in south Texas.

Last month, Sun Resources and fellow explorer Amadeus Energy farmed-in to the Lake Long project, in which First Australian Resources is also a partner, to participate in the drilling of a low-risk exploration well.

Sun Resources executive chairman Brad Farrell told PetroleumNews.net yesterday that the outlook was good for the SL 328-9 well.

“The nearby Palace [SL 328-1] well is still doing pretty well,” he said.

“It came online in 2004 at 5.6 million cubic feet of gas per day and 301 barrels per day. Now it’s at about 3.6 million cubic feet and 60 barrels.”

Yesterday, the Lake Long partners announced that the Todco 29 barge rig was being mobilised to the project area to drill the SL 328-9 well (formerly Palace SL 328-2) to a total depth of 13,555 feet (4131m).

After reinterpreting data, the operator estimates the prospect potentially contains 21.7 billion cubic feet of gas and 760,000bbl of oil. Additional potential is thought to exist in offset fault blocks of 28.7Bcf and 1 million barrels.

Australian interests in Lake Long are Amadeus (20%), FAR (10.1875%) and Sun Resources (10%).

Meanwhile, Sun Resources and its partners in the Margarita gas project are counting down to the second round of drilling.

Farrell said the final phase of its six-well shallow drilling program was likely to begin in the next week or so.

“We’re going to be drilling three back-to-back shallow wells targeting similar sized targets,” he said.

“Hopefully that will lead into the commencement of a deep well program in September.”

Each of the first three wells in the El Viejito, Dos Dedos and Milagro prospects have been drilled, completed and tested, with all wells encountering and flowing hydrocarbons.

The El Viejito-1 and Dos Dedos-1 have been put onto production, while Milagro-1 was interpreted as a high gas content oil discovery and subsequently not put online.

The campaign, which is targeting the historic Frio and Vicksburg sands at less than 2000m depth, is a pre-cursor to a higher impact program targeting 30-200Bcf of gas in the second half of this year.