"Beach is demonstrating the considerable upside yet remaining in the Cooper Basin, Australia's most prolific onshore petroleum production region - particularly as both the Parsons and Callawonga fields have exhibited high initial flow rates," Beach Petroleum managing director Reg Nelson said.

"It's significant that the Parsons and Callawonga fields are the furthest west commercial discoveries to date by any explorer in the Cooper Basin and the area remains very under-explored."

Nelson said the Namur Sandstone in the region has shown excellent reservoir qualities by the high volumes of oil flow on clean-up testing.

"For example, the Callawonga-3 well flowed oil at a rate of 5660 barrels per day during a clean-up flow, while the Parsons-1 discovery well similarly flowed oil on clean-up at a rate of 3362 barrels of oil per day," he said.

Wireline logging measurements on Parsons-2 were in line with pre-drill expectations and the well will begin oil production next month, Beach said.

Parsons-2 adds to Beach's string of commercial successes on the Cooper's western flank.

"The Parsons oil field success means that Beach and our joint venture partner, Cooper Energy, have achieved year-on-year discoveries in the western flank area since our Sellicks field discovery in 2002," Nelson said.

Oil from Parsons will initially be trucked to Callawonga, where Beach has just finished building a 5000 barrels per day capacity pipeline connecting to the central basin infrastructure.

Once the pipeline is cleared, oil from Parsons and Callawonga will be routed south via Moomba to Port Bonython at the northern end of the Spencer Gulf.

"Beach plans to construct a pipeline from Parsons to Callawonga later this year to eliminate the trucking component in an overall development cost of about $6.5 million for the field discovery and connection commitments," Nelson said.