So far the plant has achieved its best production run to date, during which shale was processed for 58 days at an average rate of 175 tonnes per hour. This beats the best previous result of 56 days processing at an average rate of 158 tonnes per hour which was achieved in the run that ended in February 2003.

More than 155,000 barrels of oil have been produced in the current run at an average rate of 2,650 barrels of oil per stream day, both new records.

Another benefit of the increased production is the oil yield performance in Stage 1 has continued to improve, achieving an average of 87% of the design level. This is an improvement of 7% from the previous run.

Ore grade in the current run has averaged 187 litres per tonne at zero percent moisture (LTOM) which is 9% higher than the design grade of 172 LTOM.

As of 16 June, the Stage 1 plant had produced more than 266,000 barrels of oil in 2003, which is 82% of the oil produced in 2002 and 44% of 2003 production target of 600,000 barrels.

Oil product sales continue to benefit from current high oil prices and have yielded net revenues of $4.2 million in May 2003, increasing year-to-date sales revenues to $14.7 million.

Now that new funding of $34 million has been received from SCP Koala Partners, execution planning and detailed engineering is ramping up on the capital improvement program for the Stage 1 plant.

The program will target increased annual oil production volumes up to 1.2-1.4 million barrels in 2005 through measures to increase both stream day capacity and plant availability.