Located in PEL 88 in the far north-eastern corner of South Australia, the Geordie Prospect is a fault-closed structure that also has a robust seismically mapped four-way dip closed component with two crests. Geordie-1 is testing the southern crest of the structure and the Triassic Tinchoo around 2247m.

Potential reserves for the four-way dip closure are asessed at 5.1 million barrels on an undiscovered P50 reserves basis according to Cooper Energy managing director Michael Scott.

"PEL 88 has the James discovery near its southern portion, which has proved oil migration into this block," he said.

"Geordie is just slightly further north-east of James, but going this far north-east will be a real test of the basin."

The joint venture participants in the well are operator Cooper Energy (30%), Sundance Energy Australia (45%), Enterprise Energy NL (10%), Victoria Petroleum NL (10%) and Liberty Petroleum (5%).

The nearby Cook field, about 30km east of Geordie-1, produced 879 barrels of oil per day from the Jurassic-aged Hutton Sandstone.

James – about 23km south of Geordie-1 – is producing 1810 barrels of oil per day from the Tinchoo reservoirs of Upper Triassic age, according to Victoria Petroleum managing director John Kopcheff.

“These oil flows, along with the shows in other nearby wells, demonstrate the potential that could exist for oil to occur in several reservoirs at the Geordie-1 location," he said.

Kopcheff described Geordie-1 as “potentially high reward, but not without risk”.