The Company has acquired the whole of the issued common shares of Grand Monarch Holdings Inc, a Delaware, fully reporting shell corporation, from Ballantyne Acquisition Corporation for 2,500,000 Empire Energy restricted shares. Ballantyne Acquisition Corporation is controlled by Tad Ballantyne, a Director of Empire Energy.

The Company has submitted tenement applications for the coal-bed methane horizons of the existing SEL 13/98 tenement and which would be tested commencing with the Bellevue #1 well, to be drilled shortly. Coal seams of Permian to Jurassic age occur throughout the Tasmanian Basin and are currently mined at several sites both by open pit and underground mining methods.

The Company has also submitted an application for a further 12,040 sq kilometres of tenement on the Eastern seaboard of Tasmania, which includes approximately 5,000 sq kilometres of offshore area, where 7 kilometres of onshore and 256 kilometres seismic operations were previously carried out by companies managed by Malcolm Bendall.

The Company will assign one third of the Eastern seaboard Tenement to its wholly owned subsidiary Grand Monarch Holdings Limited followed by a stock exchange agreement with Geominex Resources Limited, a UK private company, under which the Company will exchange 90% of Grand Monarch Holdings Limited for all of the issued and outstanding share capital of Geominex Resources. The Geominex Directors have estimated the value of their assets on a heavily discounted basis to be worth in the region of US$ 900 million.

Further to the recent filing of the 10K Report, the announced rights offering, if fully subscribed, may bring us the potential of an additional AUD$12 million to continue the drilling programs. Empire CEO Malcolm Bendall has stated, "The applications for further tenements in Tasmania confirm the Company's new financial strength capability, and its commitment and belief that there are world class volumes of oil and gas in the State.