In April, Black Rock entered into a farmin agreement with a private US independent that it declined to name.

After paying the cost of recently shot 3D seismic and paying for the three wells - two targeting oil plays and the other gas – Black Rock will have an 80% stake in the project, which covers about 3000 acres in the eastern San Joaquin Basin.

Black Rock will be the operator and it also has the right to acquire additional acreage in the surrounding area of mutual interest, said Burgess, the company’s managing director.

"This project meets our strategic criteria of near-producing assets in proven hydrocarbon provinces," he said.

"The Miocene Monterey Formation of the San Joaquin Basin is a prolific source rock and the bypassed pay inherently is a lower-risk prospect.”

Burgess said the project has considerable upside and gives Black Rock a portfolio of opportunities that could provide near-term production and cash flow.

The wells will test two different horizons in the Miocene and one in the Pliocene. All three reservoir horizons are productive in the immediate area, according to Black Rock.

The first of these wells will test a culmination fault-separated from major production and updip from a productive well which watered out.

The second will test the Monterey on the only major proven structure not to have produced from the Monterey in the area. The Monterey interval contains four reservoir zones between depths of 8,000 and 10,000 feet.

The third of these wells will provide a stratigraphic test of Pliocene sands that have produced within Black Rock’s acreage. Gas has been produced from Pliocene reservoir rocks by six wells. This interval contains pay in multiple sandstone reservoirs ranging in depths from 3,000 to 6,500 feet.

The updip oil prospect targets two tested oil accumulations in an up-thrown fault trap located on the southwest flank of a large field anticline that has produced considerable volumes of oil.

Drilling will be undertaken at a location mapped 100 feet up-dip from a well which produced over 600 barrels of oil per day with associated gas, according to Black Rock. That well is mapped on the edge of structural closure, and which produced 24,000 barrels of oil before coning water.