We have been engaged in oil and natural gas exploration and development along the Gulf Coast of the United States ("U.S.") since 2006 and in Australia since January 2000.
Our initial strategy was to enter the Australian oil and gas exploration and development industry through the acquisition of prospective acreage, development of discrete prospects and the application of underbalanced drilling and completion techniques ("UBD"), to specific hydrocarbon prone formations in known onshore oil and gas provinces of Australia. Our plan developed to include the identification of producing fields that would be suited to UBD, gain control of, or participate in, the target fields and adjacent acreage; and then apply UBD to those features with certain formation and field characteristics. Despite participating in fifteen wells in several basins in Australia, results were disappointing.
In early 2006, management and our board of directors decided to seek financing to acquire certain assets from the SKH group of partnerships and so reposition our company for exploration and production in the U.S. onshore Gulf Coast. During 2005 and 2006 we completed a series of private financing transactions, including the issuance of a $25 million debenture, that were specifically designed to permit us to initiate the Gulf Coast effort by consummating the purchase of the assets and drilling the prospects thereby acquired.
We now have a diverse suite of prospects suited to conventional drilling and representing a range of potential sizes and a number of different play types and risk profiles located in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, instead of focusing our efforts on the application of advanced drilling techniques on prospects and in mature gas fields in Australia. We intend initially to concentrate on farm-out and subsequent drilling of lower-risk prospects in the United States in order to establish cash flow either from operations or from the sale of developed prospects to third parties. At the same time, we are marketing the larger higher-risk prospects to parties with localized expertise, with the objective of accelerating the drilling timetable of potentially higher impact prospects while risk adjusting our participation interest, and exposure to drilling risk, per prospect.
Further, given that we now own 21 prospects in the U.S., in 18 of which we own approximately 100% interest in, we are in a position to trade percentage interests in our prospects for interests in other prospects, resulting in more prospects and reduced risk. We intend to operate some, but not all, of our prospects, enabling us to recover a portion of our drilling overhead and attendant administrative costs. We expect to evaluate additional prospects brought to us from time to time by third parties, including our shareholders, and acquire interests in those we deem attractive.
We have engaged an Australian investement bank to explore strategic options with respect to our Australian subsidiary.