Omega Oil & Gas (ASX: OMA) has spudded its next key well, aimed at confirming the world-class unconventional oil and gas potential of the Taroom Trough in Queensland.

The Taroom Tough sits within the Bowen Basin, one of Australia's most established petroleum provinces and a heartland of the country's coal seam gas industry, which supplies both domestic gas markets and Queensland's liquefied natural gas export sector. Omega is among a small group of explorers working to appraise deeper, unconventional oil and gas plays in the basin, where success would add a new resource dimension to a region already central to eastern Australia's energy supply.

Drilling operations have commenced at Canyon-4, the second well in the company's play-defining 2026/27 appraisal program, using the specialist H&P FlexRig 648.

Canyon-4 follows the highly successful Canyon-3 well, which confirmed Omega's understanding of the continuous nature of the highly prospective, oil and gas-bearing Permian interval on the eastern flank of the Taroom Trough. Canyon-3 intersected a 526m thick, oil and gas-bearing Permian interval containing 170m of aggregate net pay across six stacked, regionally correlatable reservoirs. In that well, the Canyon Sandstone primary target was 14% thicker and showed 55% higher average porosity than the equivalent interval in the Canyon-1 well.

CEO and Managing Director Trevor Brown said Canyon-3 also identified an additional high-quality, gas and condensate-bearing interval in the Lower Kianga Sandstone.

"Following the outstanding results achieved in our recently completed Canyon-3 well, we are pleased to have commenced drilling at Canyon-4, the second well in our play-defining Taroom Trough appraisal campaign," Mr Brown said.

"Canyon-3 results exceeded our pre-drill expectations, confirming the continuous nature of the reservoir system and the presence of thicker, higher quality sands than in Canyon-1.

"Canyon-3 also highlighted an additional, attractive reservoir interval in the Lower Kianga Sandstone."

Mr Brown said Canyon-4 is positioned to provide further evidence of the vast scale of the oil and gas resources across the company's eastern Taroom Trough acreage.

"We look forward to sharing Canyon-4 results around the end of September as we continue to systematically evaluate the huge commercial potential of our acreage and progress our assets," he said.

Located approximately eight kilometres south of Canyon-3, Canyon-4 will evaluate a highly over-pressured, stacked sequence of Permian oil and gas-bearing sandstone reservoir intervals. The top of the Permian section is expected at approximately 3,200m measured depth, approximately 100m updip from Canyon-3. The primary target is the Canyon Sandstone, and the primary objective of the well is to test the continuity and quality of the Permian reservoir system and the hydrocarbon phase distribution within Omega's PCA areas. Each successive well in the campaign is designed to build the geological picture needed before any move toward future development decisions, with results from Canyon-4 expected to further test the consistency of the reservoir system across Omega's acreage.

Shares in OMA were up 0.68% at 74.0¢, giving the company a market capitalisation of $397.1 million.