“Victoria Petroleum N.L. is very pleased to commence this operation which will result in another producing oil well in PEL 115 and the South Australian Cooper Basin," said Victoria Petroleum managing director John Kopcheff.

Victoria Petroleum aimed to complete and production test the indicated oil column within the Murta Formation of Mirage-1 through the cased hole over the next five days, he said.

Wire-line logs, sidewall cores and down-hole wire-line formation sample testing run in late December 2004 indicated a gross oil column of 17 metres extending from 1,320 to 1,337 metres.

A potential six metres of net pay has been interpreted from the wire-line logs and sidewall cores.

The casing will be perforated over the interval 1320m to 1326m within the oil-bearing Murta Formation.

The results of Drill Stem Test No.1. carried out on 12 December 2004 over the interval 1,322-1,329m indicated an initial oil influx into the drill pipe at a rate of 500 barrels of oil per day.

Subsequently the test tool plugged and reduced the rate to 150 barrels of 54 API oil per day as initially reported.

The determination of recoverable reserves for the Mirage field would be subject to production testing results and further development drilling, Victoria Petroleum said.

Mirage-1 is 5km east of the Ventura-1 well that recovered 44 barrels of clean oil from the McKinlay-Namur sandstones with an indicated potential pump rate of 340 barrels of oil per day.

"With our Ventura Oil Field discovery 5 kilometres to the west and now the Mirage Oil Field discovery, it appears that there is a highly prospective Murta oil trend present in the southern part of the permit," Kopcheff said.

"This trend extends west to east, from the Almonta Structure, shared with Beach Petroleum, through to Victoria Petroleum’s Ventura-Mirage-Lightning structures," he said.

"We await with interest the drilling planned by Beach Petroleum in early 2005 on the portion of the Almonta Prospect within the adjacent Beach Petroleum operated permit.

"The PEL 115 Joint Venture plans to further explore and develop the highly prospective Ventura-Mirage-

Lightning trend in 2005."

The participants in the production testing of Mirage-1 and PEL 115 are Victoria Petroleum (operator) 40%, Roma Petroleum 20%, Impress Ventures Ltd 15%, Entek Energy Ltd 12.5% and Tacnas Pty Ltd 12.5%.