Adelphi opened at 35 cents and closed at 33 after hitting a high for the day of 37 cents.
Its major shareholder is Arc Energy. Arc has about 25% of the issued shares and a right to increase that stake to more than 33%.
Adelphi will concentrate on high-risk, high-reward prospects. Arc will continue to concentrate on moderate-risk projects in the Perth Basin while looking for other core regions where it can apply its successful business model.
Arc and Adelphi have entered into a cooperation agreement in relation to their activities in the oil and gas sector.
It is a close alliance indeed, with Adelphi now operating out of Arc's offices in West Perth.
"The alliance with Arc provides Adelphi with access to a level of technical, management and commercial expertise that is generally not available to other companies of Adelphi’s size," said the new company's executive chairman Alex Forcke, formerly Arc's commercial director.
Forcke said the company was delighted that the transformation of the company into an oil and gas explorer had been so well supported by shareholders.
"With cash reserves of some A$13 million, Adelphi is now in a strong position to pursue and acquire additional high-impact oil and gas exploration and production opportunities, both within Australia and internationally," he said.
"We have a shortlist of other projects in mind and will be working very proactively to find more domestic and international prospects down the track," Arc managing director Eric Streitberg told Energy Review.net.
The first project is a farmin in which Adelphi is obtains a 25% interest in the Timor Sea AC/P32 permit. The stake has been acquired from minnows Norwest Energy and Bounty Oil in return for funding 37.5% of the costs of drilling one well.
Exploration licence AC/P32 is located in the Ashmore-Cartier area, which lies in the western Timor Sea in waters that are unambiguously Australian. The permit covers most of the Skua Trough/Montara Terrace within the Vulcan Sub-basin.
The primary reservoir objectives are the Early to Middle Jurassic Plover Formation and Montara Sands. Secondary objectives are the Late Cretaceous Puffin Sandstone and Late Jurassic Vulcan Formation.
Drilling of a well is planned for early 2005. Source is likely to be from the Late Jurassic marine shales in the Skua Trough and northern Browse Basin.
The depleted Skua oil field is 35km to the west of the permit and the Challis/Cassini oil fields are 20km to the northeast. The undeveloped Talbot gas field and Montara oil and gas field are also located less than 10km from the permit.
The permit is covered by 3D seismic data which has recently been reprocessed and has allowed the mapping of a number of large structures of which the largest and best defined is the Magnolia feature.
This has the potential to hold 80 to 100 million barrels of recoverable oil if hydrocarbons are present, according to Streitberg.
"Magnolia is the biggest target structure in the permit," Streitberg said.
"If Magnolia is dry it will downgrade the prospectivity of the other targets."
The well has about a 20% to 25% chance of success, Streitberg said.
