“Details of the fraccing program are now being discussed and any significant gas production can be connected to gas pipelines within a few weeks,” chief executive Joe Salomon said.

The program is at the Carden and Koppers leases in north-east Tennessee. The final well, Carden-3A, was 1.3 kilometres from the fourth, the longest distance between bores in the current schedule.

Carden 3-A intersected 131 metres of the target Devonian shale section and gas shows were detected after logs had been run.

The first two wells of the program, on the Koppers lease, showed the shale thickness to be 267m and 149m respectively.

The Carden lease wells – 1A, 2A and 3A – respectively intersected shale 155m, 153m and 131m thick.

All five wells showed gas and the thick shale section was good reason to be optimistic about gas reserves and flows, Salomon said.

Norwest will earn a 37.5% from the wells’ production from a shallow gas project operated by Miller Petroleum of Tennessee.

Each bore was run to reach either the base of the prospective Devonian Shale, or 975 metres, depending on which was deeper.

With the first five wells completed, Norwest has an option to be part of a larger program increasing in stages to potentially drill more than 100 wells.