Bounty lodged an appeal on October 5 against Crown Minerals’ decision to revoke the company's licence.

Bounty wants the revocation suspended until the chief ombudsman’s recommendations are delivered early next month.

“Crown Minerals on September 8 issued a notice to revoke the permit based on the asserted failure to file the seismic data,” said Bounty.

But managing director Laurence Roe said he was confident the ombudsman would side with the company.

“On advice, Bounty is optimistic of a favourable outcome from the chief ombudsman’s review and believes this should enable it to resolve both the drilling and seismic filing issues simultaneously,” Roe said.

While a hearing is not expected until early to mid next year, the appeal serves to suspend the revocation notice in the meantime.

Earlier in the year, Bounty reported that processing of 2000km of 2D seismic shot over PEP 38215 last year was complete, but Crown Minerals had not agreed to requests for an extension to the time allowed to complete mapping and to drill in the permit. The company then sought an ombudsman's review to challenge this.

At the time, Bounty said it had provided a detailed response to this notice, but was subsequently “treated unfairly” by the Crown Minerals under the relevant regulatory guidelines.

“Bounty believes there are good reasons for the non-filing and we responded in detail to this initial notice,” said Roe.

The saga extends as far back late last year, after Crown Minerals moved to start revocation procedures because Bounty had failed to drill a well in the permit by August 2004.

“We were advised that in the events that have happened, the applicable policy would justify an extension of the drilling date – we responded to this notice accordingly,” said Roe.

In other news, Bounty said the much-anticipated Magnolia prospect in the Timor Sea was scheduled for drilling in the last week of November, according to operator Norwest.

It also announced that the Utopia-6 development well drilled last month had been completed and put onto production. The well is producing about 40 barrels of oil per day, with a similar water volume equivalent.

“As the flow from the well is still cleaning up and we are yet to fine tune the production, the final flow rate will vary but at this time we are encouraged by its initial performance,” said Roe.

This flow rate has more than doubled the total Utopia field production rate from 35 barrels of oil per day to 75 bopd.