For the past several months Aurora executive chairman Jon Stewart, technical director Ian Lusted and finance director Graham Dowland have been putting together the financing to complete deals in the US oil patch, and it looks like they have put their foot on a slice of the Tuscaloosa marine shale trend.

The Tuscaloosa is an underexplored Late Cretaceous shale that has been subjected to some drilling activity in the past 20 years, but it has not been commercial for most of that time.

The shale is usually between 200-350m thick and sits between 3300m and 4500m, beneath the prolific Austin Chalk and is reported to have better porosities than the Eagle Ford Shale.

A number of wells were drilled with some success in 2014 and 2015, but since oil prices came off the Tuscaloosa has again been relegated to non-core status by a lot of companies, many of whom instead focused on the easier Eagle Ford Shale.

Goodrich Petroleum, recently dropped from the New York Stock Exchange, is the largest player in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale with more than 461,000 acres under lease.

Last year Goodrich announced that it had completed wells with initial production rates in the first 24 hours of around 1240-1370bopd after fraccing.

Overall it has drilled almost two dozen wells with reported IP24 over 1000boepd since entering the play in 2014.

Horizontal wells were then costing around $US10 million each, a big gamble for the deep, technologically challenging play, which when successful yields Light Louisiana Sweet oil that used to command a $4 premium to WTI.

The West Australian reported this morning that Stewart's newly minted Australis Oil & Gas is focused on securing interests on the Tuscaloosa trend, which is considered analogous to the Eagle Ford Shale where Aurora was so successful.

Australis is aiming to capitalise on falling valuations for oil and gas assets in the US, and aims to replicate Aurora's success in the Sugarloaf field, Texas, by getting into acreage early and cheaply, and then working to find the best completion method for the shale.

The initial deal is said to be for a 50% operating stake in some 34,000 acres of the play, which stretches from Louisiana into Mississippi.

A number of Australian juniors, most notably Pryme Energy, have participated in the drilling of the Tuscaloosa trend, but without success so far.

Australis, which is aiming to use equity to fund its early development work, is trying to get in before oil prices recover.

The junior has raised $24 million through Euroz Securities to kick things off and is just starting to pick up assets in what is a distressed market.

Australis is seeking material, quality energy reserves and will probably have the capacity to spend as much as $200 million by the time it comes to pull the trigger on an acquisition, The West reported.

That money will be used to invest counter-cyclically, and the company will take a long view of the prospects for an oil price recovery.

Australis is expected to remain a private company for the foreseeable future, but will seek to list once the environment is right.