Under the deal with Cue Energy Resources, MEO is earning operatorship and a 60% stake in each of the blocks - WA-359-P, WA-360-P and WA-361-P - by agreeing to fund seismic and drilling costs.

On Friday, the company announced it had signed a letter of award with PGS Australia to secure the M/V Orient Explorer to firstly acquire about 250 square kilometres of 3D data, followed by 250 line km of 2D data, over the three permits.

Due to begin on December 1, the 3D survey is expected to take 17 days to complete.

The vessel will then be reconfigured to acquire 250 line km of new 2D data.

In addition, MEO has contracted Dayboro Geophysical to reprocess about 600 sq.km of 3D data acquired by Western Mining in 1997.

MEO said it had identified many oil and gas leads after reviewing the 2D and 3D data, which covers a large portion of the permits.

One large feature, known as Zeus, has similar high amplitude bright spots to the reservoir sections of the adjacent Perseus gas field, according to MEO.

"The reprocessed data covers the large Zeus feature in WA-361-P and will focus the application of modern processing streams to reduce multiples and to recover the offset gathers so that accurate mapping and AVO analysis can be undertaken," MEO said.

"This is expected to further delineate the extent and nature of the 'bright events' noted within the target reservoir sections of Zeus.

"These bright events are regarded as possible amplitude-related hydrocarbon indicators that are the same sands and similar to amplitudes observed in the nearby Perseus Gasfield reservoir gas sands."

The three NWS permits are adjacent to the Woodside-operated North West Shelf Venture's Rankin, Goodwin and Perseus gas fields.

Post farm-in, MEO will have a 60% stake in the three North West Shelf permits, while Cue Energy will have 20%. Other partners are Exoil and Gascorp.