Vintage Energy is drumming up cash as it evaluates what it describes as a potentially significant oil province in the Cooper-Eromanga basin around the border between Queensland and South Australia.

Vintage is raising additional working capital to fund a permanent connection for its Odin gas field and to gauge the oil potential of the company’s assets located on the Cooper Basin’s Southern Flank.

Looking to raise just over $2 million, the company noted that recent events in the Middle East had starkly exposed the need to bolster Australia’s domestic oil production and reserves.

“Very few companies operating onshore in Australia are as well placed as Vintage to provide oil drilling targets that are close to being ready to drill and capable of rapid development if successful,” Vintage managing director Neil Gibbins said.

Vintage holds 2P reserves of 71 PJ (gas and ethane, 50 per cent basis) in the producing Vali and Odin gas fields.

It said the oil prospectivity of its acreage had been affirmed by oil discoveries and producing fields in the region and the oil shows recorded in all of the wells Vintage has drilled in the Odin and Vali gas fields.

‘Using innovative and advanced exploration technologies, such as AI-assisted geophysics, the Vintage exploration team intends to home in on the Southern Flank’s oil potential,’ the company said in an update to the ASX.

‘Analysis conducted to date has yielded 20 potentially oil-bearing leads and prospects from which two preferred candidates for drilling have been selected.

‘As supply risks linked to the Strait of Hormuz highlight Australia’s reliance on imported fuels, fast-cycle, onshore developments, close to infrastructure allowing rapid development, are critical to strengthening domestic energy security.’