Central’s wholly owned subsidiary Merlin Energy will fund 100% of the drilling of up to three wells over the Simpson, Bejah and Dune prospect blocks in EP 97 in the Pedirka Basin to earn an 80% participating interest and operatorship of the three prospect blocks, Central said this morning.

Merlin will also fund 100km of 2D seismic and will also earn 80% of any coal seam methane resources in the prospect blocks via the farm-in program.

Merlin has contingent plans in place to drill the Blamore prospect in its EP 93 which is contiguous to the west with Rawson’s EP 97.

“There is potential synergy in the drilling of one of the EP 97 prospects during the same drilling campaign as Blamore-1 in EP 93 which is planned contingently to commence during the fourth quarter of 2007,” Central managing director John Heugh said.

Central is targeting a mean recoverable prospective resource of about 40 million barrels in the Blamore structure, an older structure not likely to have been breached by Miocene [Tertiary] structural rejuvenation.

Heugh said Central believed that although the source rocks in the Pedirka Basin are in general more oil prone than those of the Cooper-Eromanga Basin, the regions have many similarities.

“Oil, and to a lesser degree gas, has been generated from Permian, Triassic and Early Jurassic source rock sequences with migration during the Early-Late Cretaceous,” he said.

“The most attractive structures are those with an older Jurassic-Cretaceous component of structuring which predates oil migration. This can be readily gauged, together with migration pathways from source kitchens, by measuring the history of structural growth as defined by seismic isochrons, which is a major component of Central’s exploration approach.”

Central maintains that robust Miocene structures are largely non-prospective and by far the most attractive, and least explored plays, are subtle Jurassic-Cretaceous closures (10-30m of vertical closure) displaying little or no Miocene [Tertiary] reactivation, and also formed on favourable migration pathways from source kitchens.

“Both permits [EP 93 and EP 97] cover large areas of the Permian Pedirka Basin with Triassic and Jurassic Eromanga Basin sediments overlying the older Permian sequence,” Heugh said.