Like last year's successful inaugural workshop, the event comes immediately after the APPEA conference.

Arc managing director Eric Streitberg - who won APPEA's Reg Sprigg award earlier this week for outstanding service to the industry - said the 2008 workshop attracted an increased number of researchers from Australia's leading government and academic institutions.

The participants had the opportunity to consider the ‘hot off the press' results from Arc's first drilling season and according to Streitberg, the outcomes would help guide the company's ongoing 20 well exploration program over the next three years.

"The Cracking workshops provide an historic opportunity to use the enormous wealth of knowledge and research that has been built up over the last 30 years to crack the petroleum secrets of the Canning Basin," Streitberg said.

"In addition to providing direct benefits to petroleum exploration in WA's frontier

basins, these workshops are also building stronger partnerships and collaborations

between industry, universities and government researchers."

Meanwhile, Arc's frontier exploration program continues. Streitberg said the three completed wells and the fourth currently being drilled had demonstrated the presence of working and vigorous petroleum systems in the basin.

"In addition to the drilling results, Arc has acquired over 850km of new seismic data since its exploration program commenced," he said.

"The new data has revealed very large, previously unmapped structures in areas with proven oil and gas potential, confirming the very underexplored nature of the basin," he said.

The potential of the Canning Basin has also been recognised by the oil and gas industry's peak body, APPEA.

"It's clearly in the national interest to find out just what is in those vast unexplored basins that geologists believe hold similarities to oil and gas bearing basins elsewhere in the world," APPEA spokesman Trevor Powell said.

"In a nation as underexplored as Australia, the results of a single well may change perceptions of prospectivity significantly."

Streitberg said Arc would be announcing a further initiative with respect to education and industry experience opportunities for young earth scientists as part of the workshop proceedings.