VicPet, whose fellow Australian partners in the project are Adelaide Energy and Fall River Resources, said 25 barrels of oil and associated gas was recovered over 12 hours of swabbing operations on the zone in the Codell Sand and Lower Niobrara Fort Hays.

Today the joint venture plans to frac the mid Niobrara oil bearing zone, to determine the oil flow rate this zone can produce and contribute to the overall production of the well on pump.

The remaining third secondary target, the Pierre Shale, also yielded good oil shows during drilling with extensive fracturing and will be assessed later, with a well targeted as a production test.

VicPet said the adjacent oil producing wells of the Florence Oil Field required fracture stimulation to produce commercial quantities of oil.

This was the first well to be drilled in the West Florence project and the 12,000 acres of associated leasehold acreage in the Florence Sub Basin of the Denver Basin.

The project area, with an estimated 100-200 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas and 15 million barrels of oil, is west of the Florence oil field, which produced about 15 million barrels of oil from fractured shales of the Pierre Formation in the 1940s.

Denver-based Mountain Petroleum is the project's operator, while VicPet has a 25% interest, Fall River 15% and Adelaide Energy 10%.