Company chief executive John Bay told PetroleumNews.net L&M planned to drill Sharpridge Creek-4 as a follow-up to the earlier shallow Sharpridge Creek-1 and 3 wells.
“There is potentially one other shallow well, which I can’t specify yet,” he said.
The company will also drill the deeper Otahu-1 well, plus another yet-to-be confirmed deeper well, in the Te Anau region.
L&M also planned to acquire about 165km of onshore 2D seismic, in a staged program, over various leads and plays within its four Western Southland Basin permits as a precursor to the drilling.
All of the company’s four wells drilled so far – the shallow Sharpridge Creek-1 and 3, and the deep Eastern Bush-1 and Dean-1 – have encountered sub-commercial residual oil shows.
But L&M says it still has faith in the potential of the under-explored Southland region, both onshore and offshore.
L&M has identified at least seven offshore prospects within the recently enlarged PEP 38237 licence, according to Bay.
L&M estimated the highest ranked of these prospects – Waitutu, Waitutu East, Solander South and Northeast Parara – had combined best estimate potential resources of about one billion barrels of oil originally in place.
Last July, L&M relinquished PEP 38228 in the Solander Basin, principally because it could not meet an August drilling commitment, but was granted a 2009 square kilometre offshore extension to PEP 38237 that included Waitutu and the other prospects.
Bay said L&M was entering the second phase of its Southland exploration program and the company was still on track with its proposed $US14 million onshore seismic and drilling program for 2007-08, and had so far spent just over $US1 million.
“So the $A20 million raised by the company in its successful IPO on the ASX and NZX is largely still intact, except for the costs of the float, the drilling of the Sharpridge Creek wells and the overheads to establish and run the Wellington office,” Bay said.
Government-owned Mighty River Power earned a 50% stake in L&M's deep wells by funding drilling costs.
