In an activity report, the company said the bad weather affected trucking operations, which deferred production from all fields and caused mechanical downtime.

As a result, oil sales for the three months to June 30 had also dropped 24% to $4.9 million.

Cooper’s production for the financial year 2006-07 was 256,871 barrels of oil, slightly lower than its forecast output of 275,000 bbl.

“The shortfall [was] mainly caused by rain deferring production during May 2007 and mechanical downtime in Christies and Worrior deferring production in the September 2006 quarter,” it said.

“For the 2007-2008 financial year, Cooper Energy has established a ‘do nothing’ base case forecast of 200,000 barrels of oil with an uncertainty of 150,000-250,000.”

At the end of June, Cooper had 1.04 million barrels of recoverable oil at the P50 level of confidence – up 26% from a year earlier.

“Evaluations on the Callawonga oil field demonstrate that the development wells have the potential to add 0.65 million barrels of P50 recoverable oil to Cooper Energy’s developed recoverable hydrocarbon portfolio,” it said.