The well will now be permanently sealed. The Ocean Patriot rig is expected to be released on the weekend.

The disappointment at Maclean follows a duster at Gilbert-1, also in Vic/P47.

The Maclean partners – BSOC, Moby Oil & Gas and Eagle Bay Resources – were also involved in Gilbert. BSOC had no equity in the project but was the operator, while Moby and Eagle had stakes in Gilbert.

Moby said with Gilbert and Maclean-1 well both now completed, its main focus would be on the remaining prospectivity in Vic/P47 and numerous targets in Vic/P41, Vic/P45 and Vic/P53.

“Having assembled a concentrated portfolio of tenements in the Gippsland Basin, an area which we consider to have great potential for the discovery of small to medium-sized oil accumulations, our plan is to methodically explore and extract the potential from each of the blocks in which we hold an interest, chairman Geoffrey Albers said.

Participants in Maclean-1 well and the Vic/P47 joint venture are Bass Strait Oil Company Ltd ( BAS) operator and 40%, Moby Oil & Gas Limited (MOG) 35% and Eagle Bay Resources NL (EBR) 25%.

Participants in Gilbert-1 are: Gippsland Offshore Petroleum 51% Eagle Bay Resources 10%, Lakes Oil NL (LKO) 26%, Moby Oil & Gas Limited (MOG) 10% and Stellar Resources (SRZ) 3%. Bass Strait Oil Company (BAS) was operator but had no equity.