the Goldie-1 well and the Ngatoro fields, to Greymouth Petroleum for an undisclosed sum.

However, the company has also been granted PPL 235 in Papua New Guinea, including the Douglas Prospect and several other targets. The drilling of Douglas is planned within the next two years.

Back in New Zealand the company has been forced to plug and abandon the Wawiri-1 well after failing to encounter significant hydrocarbons. The South Pacific Drilling rig is now being prepared for the move to the Bluff-1 wellsite in PEP 38746; and that well will commence in the next few days.

CEO Dave Bennett commented "while unsuccessful wells are never desirable, our farmout arrangements and the turnkey drilling contract held down the company's financial exposure to around $200,000.

"We were very pleased with the drilling performance of the South Pacific rig, which opens up a new era of cheaper drilling of Mt Messenger targets such as Bluff and Wawiri; and we have a number of suitable drilling targets identified on our Kaimata 3D seismic data and elsewhere."