Covering 17,225 acres, the four leases have 10-year terms and provide critical lease over a number of the company’s prospects.

“This important lease acquisition … provides Comet Ridge with complete control of the prospects and leads the company has developed,” the company said.

“The lease acquisition phase is now, for all intents and purposes, complete.”

Next year, the company plans to shoot 10 square miles (26sq.km) of 3D seismic over the Caldwell Creek structure, as well as 60 miles (96km) of 2D seismic lines over structures in the Black Creek area.

“Acquisition of the data is expected to commence in late March to mid April to avoid the wetter winter months,” Comet said.

“At the same time [Comet subsidiary] St Helens is permitting a number of well locations for drilling immediately after the seismic has been processed and interpreted.

“The specific locations to be drilled will be determined by the results of the seismic surveys.”

The Grays Harbor Basin is a lightly-explored sedimentary basin in western Washington State. Exploration for oil and gas began in the region in 1901 and continued until the mid 1980s.

No work has been done in the basin since then, despite numerous indications of oil and gas, including a number of gas blowouts.

Over the past year, St. Helens has reprocessed about 450 miles of 2D seismic and developed a portfolio of prospects and leads that offer a prospective resource of around 1.7 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, at the P50 level of confidence.

Two of the prospects designated for drilling in 2008, Caldwell Creek and Black Creek, offer a combined unrisked prospective recoverable gas resource of around 210 billion cubic feet of gas.