The discovery was made at the Swift North-1 exploration well in AC/P34 in the Ashmore Cartier area of the Timor Sea, in which the company holds a 100% interest.

The Swift North-1 well intersected a 23m oil column that tested successfully as a high producer.

Coogee Resources chief executive Peter Hood said Swift North-1 had the potential to contain 4-5 million barrels of recoverable oil and potential production rates in excess of 7000 bbls of oil per day.

Hood said this would lift the combined reserves around the Montara oilfield to about 37 million bbls.

“This latest discovery strengthens our view that the Montara development stacks up very well in both financial terms and in reserves,” he said.

“The changed price environment and new discoveries have brought Montara into a zone of strong financial viability and we are keen to move quickly towards development later in 2006.”

Coogee Resources intends to develop the three adjacent fields – Montara, Skua and Swift – through a new Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.

The vessel will be located south of the FPSOs operating at the Challis and Jabiru oilfields, both of which are operated by Coogee Resources. The company has a 70.94% interest in Challis and Jabiru.

The semi-submersible Ocean Bounty rig that drilled Swift North-1 has now moved on to drill the nearby Swallow-1 prospect, also 100%-owned by Coogee Resources.

Hood said Coogee Resources was currently considering different funding options for developing the Montara project.

“We have a number of options before us and clearly one of those would be to take Coogee Resources to the Australian listed market,” he said.

“The board will work through the full range of options in the coming months and we expect we will be in a position to make an announcement towards the end of the current financial year.

“Our focus is on starting development of the Montara project by the end of 2006, with first production in 2008.”