Hello, everyone. My name's Alex Underwood. I'm the CEO of Empire Energy an Australian gas developer focused on the Beetaloo Basin, one of the world's largest undeveloped shale gas resources. I met with a number of you a few weeks ago during the conference, and I'm just providing a quick update on some of the exciting news that we have to share with you. Empire is based in the Beetaloo Basin, and as I mentioned, in Northern Australia, we are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Our market cap is a couple of hundred million Australian dollars. We are currently focused on moving our very large gas resource in the Beetaloo Basin into pilot development. That means taking existing wells that we've drilled and a recent well that we've drilled and will soon be fracking into production.
The most near-term news we have coming, which I'm going to turn to, is the stimulation of a well we've just drilled, Carpentaria 5H. We believe this is a major event for our company with the potential to create significant value for shareholders. The pilot project itself will aim to deliver up to 25 million cubic feet of gas a day into an existing pipeline. That pipeline is owned by the Northern Territory Government. We have signed a 10-year gas sales agreement with the Northern Territory Government to provide gas supply into a critically undersupplied local market. In future years, we will be sending larger volumes of gas into both Australia's East Coast and into LNG markets in Asia. These current pilot projects will really provide a very important demonstration of commercial viability so that we can then look to scale up to drilling hundreds of wells.
We recently drilled Carpentaria 5H. This was the most successful and longest horizontal well drilled in the basin to date. What we are looking to do is replicate the incredible revolution in energy supply that has occurred in the United States through the modern technologies of horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracture stimulation of shales. Over the Christmas period, we drilled Carpentaria 5H, targeting the Velkerri B Shale. That well was successfully drilled with a 3.3 km or over 2 mile horizontal section and was successfully cased and cemented into place, as you can see on this schematic. This well has set us up perfectly for what will be the biggest fracture stimulation job done in Australian history to occur later this month, working with Halliburton, one of the world's leading oilfield services companies.
Over recent years, the basin is going through very significant and rapid uplifts in productivity driven by the application of US fracture stimulation technology and into this new basin. A number of horizontal wells have been drilled in the basin, and we are seeing dramatic uplifts in productivity as the industry learns how to get up that technical learning curve, as has been seen in the United States over the years. Specifically, we have been working through a number of key de-risking methodologies. First of all, we need to be able to drill long horizontal wells. Earlier, prior to the drilling of Carpentaria 5H, Empire Energy had drilled two vertical wells successfully and then two short horizontal wells, Carpentaria 2H and Carpentaria 3H. We have now successfully drilled a much longer and larger diameter well, Carpentaria 5H.
As I mentioned, it is over 3 km inside the Velkerri B Shale. We have increased the casing size to 5.5 inches. The reason for increasing casing size is that with the availability of more fracture stimulation horsepower in Australia now, we can pump at higher rates and higher pressure to open up a greater fracture network within the rock with a goal of increasing productivity. We have also learned from the drilling of previous horizontal wells how to land the horizontal section in the best parts of the rock, and we are very happy with the result of that drilling phase. Now, as I mentioned, we move on to the stimulation of Carpentaria 5H. We have carried out stimulation or fracking of three wells so far. The first one was a vertical well, Carpentaria 1. That flowed gas to surface.
We have then drilled and fracture stimulated Carpentaria 2H and Carpentaria 3H. Across those three wells, we have carried out 61 fracture stimulation stages. In those wells, we were trialling different methodologies: what type of fluids to use, what grain size of sand to pump into the hole, and how to orient the perforations into the well bore. All of that was part of the learning curve that has occurred through every US basin and every international basin, and it has put us in a position now where we can start to optimize our fracture stimulation design. To that end, we are working with one of the world's leading fracture stimulation experts out of the United States, and we have developed an optimized strategy utilizing what's called slickwater design, which is a common design used in the United States now, which has really opened up an incredible industry.
It's turned the U.S. from being an energy importer to an energy exporter, and we are very excited about the upcoming fracture stimulation of Carpentaria 5H that will occur later this quarter, as I mentioned. We have a binding gas sales agreement with the Northern Territory Government, and we will be delivering gas under this gas sales agreement into the Northern Territory market, aiming to commence sales by the end of this year, if not early next year. In Australia, we have gas shortages, so unlike the U.S., we have very strong gas prices, which we believe will help underwrite the economics of the project. Now, while we are very excited about helping to resolve energy supply issues in the Northern Territory, we are also focused on then how do we grow beyond that in years ahead. Australia's gas, East Coast gas market, is critically undersupplied.
We have seen gas prices of around two to three times those in the United States, and that is causing inflation in our country, and also it is having an impact on our manufacturing industries and economic growth generally. To that end, we are focused in the second phase on delivering gas into the Australian East Coast. There are existing pipeline connections into the Australian East Coast, but APA Group, Australia's largest pipeline infrastructure provider, are working on developing, building a much larger pipeline to connect very, very large volumes of gas from the Beetaloo into the Australian East Coast. That will then provide energy security for the Australian East Coast and put downward pressure on gas prices in Australia.
Ultimately, however, the scale of this resource with hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of gas in place in world-class shales, it affords the opportunity for the Beetaloo Basin to continue Australia's LNG export industry, which is one of the world's largest exporters. We foresee in years ahead that the basin can provide large volumes of gas into Australia's East Coast and into Asian LNG markets, thereby providing energy security for the people of Australia and the broader region. Thank you very much for your time today. If you have any questions or you'd like to learn more about the company, you can visit our website, empireenergygroup.com.au, or you can contact us at info@empireenergygroup.com.au. Thank you.