Empire Energy Corporation International (Empire) intends to file the Registration Statement with the SEC regarding the announced Rights Issue in the coming week. The Rights Issue will become available when the registration is declared effective by the SEC.

The registration filing is the preliminary stage of the USD$9 million (AUD$12 million) Rights Issue. Shareholders of record on December 18, 2008 are eligible to subscribe for one share for every two shares held at that date at a price of US$ 7 cents (about AUD$ 9 cents) per share. With the proceeds, Empire intends to expand funding of the drilling campaign and pay outstanding due debts of Empire and its subsidiaries, including Great South Land Minerals Ltd.

A Special Exploration License (SEL) application for Coal Bed Methane over an area of 11,227 square kilometres (4,335 square miles, 2.8 million acres) of the Tasmania Basin, has been allocated the reference SEL 5/2009 by Mineral Resources Tasmania for assessment purposes. This complements the current drilling program on Bellevue #1, as the Company expects to intersect and test several seams over approximately 20m (65 feet) of coal. Empire estimates that this coal may contain 1-2 cubic meters of methane gas per square meter of coal within the Permian and Triassic sequences, which are anticipated to occur between about 450m (1,476 feet) to 1,300m (4,265 feet) depth. This coal seam gas was first tested by a predecessor company of Great South Land Minerals in a well in Eastern Tasmania.

In addition, an SEL application for 12,040 square kilometres (4,649 square miles, 3 million acres) for the eastern part of the Tasmania Basin including offshore Storm Bay, adjacent to Empire’s current 15,410 square kilometres (5,950 square miles, 3.8 million acres) SEL 13/98, has been given the reference SEL 4/2009 for assessment purposes.

Under the SEL 4/2009 application, Empire has proposed a 560 kilometre (348 mile) onshore seismic program and the acquisition and processing of over 2,000 kilometres (1,242 miles) of offshore seismic within Tasmanian (900km/559 miles) and Australian Commonwealth (1,100 kilometres/683 miles) waters.

A privately funded 256 kilometre offshore 2-D seismic acquisition program was carried out with an Australian Government seismic ship in 1987-8 by Empire CEO Malcolm Bendall through a predecessor company, which processed and interpreted this seismic data and drilled a 1,751m (5,745 feet) stratigraphic well on Bruny Island in the south of Tasmania in 1995-6. This well successfully flowed wet gas to octane and 4.8% helium gas.

Tags: Empire Energy