I got this from Yahoo. Looks like we do indeed have a gusher here! Bligh is up 40% according to some of the Yahoo posters, and Swift will make a press release about the well Tuesday morning.
This should send shorts scrambling to cover, plus now that SFY is part of the S&P small cap index we may see some buying there too. I'm going to put in a high limit order for my shares, which I understand makes the shares unavailable to shorts.
Press release (copied from Yahoo post - read at your own risk):
NZ Rimu Could Be Major Oil Find If Tied To Kauri Prospect
Monday, September 4, 2000 01:45 AM
WELLINGTON (Dow Jones)--Electric logs to be run at the Rimu B-1 appraisal well over the next 24 hours could help
confirm that the Rimu oil field in Taranaki on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island is a discovery of major commercial
significance, one of the interest-holders in Rimu said Monday.
Bligh Oil & Mineral NL (A.BOM, news, msgs), which holds a 10% interest in petroleum exploration license 38719 containing
Rimu, told the Australian Stock Exchange, or ASX, structural features contained in the Rimu B-1 well suggest that Rimu and
the Kauri prospect to the south might be linked.
Bligh said that Rimu B-1 had strong oil and natural gas shows including flows to surface requiring containment measures.
Rimu B-1 was drilled to a total depth of 4,099 meters.
"The most important potential reservoir section was encountered in the interval between depths of 4,029 meters and 4,041
meters," Bligh said.
The payzone at the Rimu field is contained in the Tariki sandstones.
Possible Multiple Zone Discovery
"Should the reservoir quality of the lower Tariki (formation) in the B-1 well be confirmed by log and test data, a multiple zone
discovery of major commercial significance could be indicated in the Rimu structure," the statement by Bligh to the ASX said.
U.S.-based Swift Energy Corp. (SFY, news, msgs), whose New Zealand unit holds a 90% stake in the license and is the
field operator, has estimated that Rimu could contain 20 million to 100 million barrels of oil and that Kauri 2.5 kilometers south
of Rimu could hold 300 million to 500 million bbl of recoverable oil.
Rimu A-1 flowed 2,000 bbl of oil and an associated 5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day in a production test.
"The structural elevations, which have been encountered in Rimu B-1, suggest the possibility that the Rimu structure and
the major Kauri feature to the south could be continuous and that the Rimu feature may be nothing more than the north
plunging nose of Kauri," Bligh told the ASX.
The preliminary results at Rimu B-1 were extremely encouraging but caution was warranted until the log results were
known, Bligh said.
Swift has said it hopes to produce oil from the Rimu field by the first quarter of 2001.
Swift's New Zealand chief executive Don Morgan said Monday that more would be known about whether Rimu and Kauri
were joined once the results of the Rimu B-1 well tests were available.
Morgan said Swift would be issuing a press release on the well from Houston Tuesday U.S. time.
-By John Barton, Dow Jones Newswires; 644 8018960; john.barton@dowjones.com
(Corrected 02:37 AM)
Quote for referenced ticker symbols: SFY
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