PEL 41 was granted to a deliberately SA-based new venture exploration company consisting of Chairman and well-known Emeritus Professor of Geology Eric Rudd, four other founding honorary and unsalaried directors, and 100 or so individual speculative small shareholders, who contributed a total of around $1.5 million in venture funds. Frontier Exploration Ltd's main intent was to try to unravel the mystery of how the large, ancient and geologically exceedingly unusual sedimentary diapirs of the central Flinders Ranges region were formed, and simultaneously to gauge what economic benefits any associated undiscovered mineral and petroleum deposits might confer on the local community, following the State Bank financial disaster. Possible intrusive Proterozoic salt bodies beneath the Blinman, Upalinna, Martins Well, Mount Hemming, Willippa and Bibliando Domes were investigated by field mapping, including the construction of measured outcrop stratigraphic sections, seismic surveying (a 10 km line over the crest of Martins Well Dome), airborne magnetic/radiometric surveys (900 line km at 400 m line spacing flown over the Bibliando Dome magnetic anomaly), gravity data interpretation, and the rotary/diamond drilling and geophysical logging of two cored holes. Blinman 1 was abandoned in diapiric material at 481 m, having intersected traces of potassium salts near TD. Blinman 2 recorded slight hydrocarbon shows (gas from fracture porosity and bitumen coated grains in dolomitic breccia) before terminating at 2031 m depth without reaching the target Callanna Group. Gossans sampled on the Willippa Anticline returned assays of 4.6% Cu, anomalous Mn and As, and elevated Co and Ni values. Exploration efforts by the licensee, an unlisted public company, were continually hampered from 1992 onwards by a lack of operating capital and risk-orientated investor interest. A potential saviour farminee in the form of a cashed-up lower ranking North American petroleum company defaulted on its joint exploration agreement at the last minute in mid-1998, owing to its uncertainty over being granted petroleum production rights, should an economic discovery be made, in the newly prevailing situation of unresolved Native Title claims. For the majority of the licences' 10-year term, significant activity has been restricted to theoretical studies of resource potential by the licensee company's principals and selected consultants, regrettably based on insufficient new data.