The Brisbane-based junior said the project gave the company an inventory of prospects to develop and drill for the next 10 years, with exploration targets ranging in depths from 3500-25,000 feet (1066.8-7620m).

Checkmate is in an area known as the Florida Parishes, which is one of the most under-explored regions in south Louisiana, and is surrounded in all directions by “very prolific” fields.

To date, about 2.3 trillion cubic feet of gas has been produced from Lower Cretaceous reservoirs in the northeastern corner of the project area, while 180 billion cubic feet of gas has been produced from the Mooringsport at the eastern edge. Tuscaloosa fields on the shelf range up to 8 million barrels of oil.

Pryme will explore the acreage in partnership with Texas-headquartered Amelia Resources, which has spent 16 years evaluating the hydrocarbon potential of the region.

Amelia has assembled 500 miles of 2D seismic data and 16,200 stations of gravity data, which was integrated with subsurface control to identify regional “areas of interest” and prospective leads.

“The project area presents a very large exploration frontier and has an abundance of commercial 2D seismic data that can be reprocessed and utilised to define these opportunities,” Pryme said.

“Checkmate provides Pryme a long-term project area with the potential for numerous prospects.”