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Empire cashes up for Tasmania push



By Upstream staff 

Kansas-based Empire Energy has signed a financing arrangement with Delaware’s Wind City for funds to carry out further seismic and a 14-well drilling programme in Tasmania.

Wind City will provide an initial $4 million to Empire’s wholly-owned subsidiary Great South Land Minerals (GSLM), while attendant warrants issued by Empire could provide an extra $12 million if they are exercised.

As part of the agreement, Wind City will ship a new land rig from the US to Tasmania. GSLM will also have the option to buy the rig at a pre-determined price.

Empire planned to start drilling on Special Exploration Licence (SEL) 13/98 in August, but licensing delays, coupled with problems getting the rig shipped to Australia in time forced the company to push back its plans.

The company said that it has now obtained licences for a number of sites and will start drilling in early 2007.

Empire has already completed 810 line kilometres of 2D seismic to date, including 150 line kilometres shot earlier this year before bad weather put work on hold.

A further 700 line kilometres of seismic data will be completed under the current programme, bringing the total costs for seismic work this year to A$6.25 million (US$4.8 million).

Empire has applied for a new SEL covering 10,000 square kilometres to the east of SEL 13/98 and hopes to drill several exploration wells later next year.


Thursday, 16 November, 2006, 02:43 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 16 November, 2006, 18:00 GMT

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