Maurel et Prom headed back up together with the other African E&P players
At last some positive news came from Premier Oil's drilling project in Mauritania. There has recently been 2 poor drilling updates, but progress is now being made on the project. It said preliminary interpretation of logs acquired while drilling and wireline logging operations at its Tiof-5 Appraisal well, including fluid sampling and downhole pressure measurements, indicate the well has intersected a gross oil column of approximately 23 metres in several individual sands of variable thickness. Premier has a 9.231% interest in the well and its shares were unchanged at 531.5p. Hardman Resources (up 3.5p to 52p) has a 21.6% interest and Roc Oil (up 1p to 70p) a 3.693% interest. BG Group (up 1p to 349.5p) owns 11%.63%, with the remainder owned by Australia's Woodside.
Mid-cap peer Burren Energy also saw its share price rise 41p to 434p after it issued a positive drilling report from a project in Congo. The company announced the results of wells 1301 and 303 on the M'Boundi field in the African state. The test production rates from these two wells are the largest witnessed to date on the M'Boundi field and, in both cases, came from the Vandji B reservoir. Seymour Pierce said that, assuming M'Boundi contains recoverable reserves of 300 mmbbl, its latest estimate of Burren's net asset value is 451p a share. However, with every successful well it seems more likely that the 478 mmbbl reserves figure being carried by Maurel & Prom, M'Boundi's operator, will prove to be correct. If that was to be the case, then the broker said it think Burren's NAV would increase by approximately 30%. It rates the shares a buy.
Positive drilling updates from oil explorers were a theme of the day. Also giving a positive progress reports was Global Energy Development, which announced the successful re-completion and commencement of production from the Tilodiran 1 well within its 75,000-acre Rio Verde Exploration and Production contract in Colombia. This commencement of production following the signing of the Rio Verde Contract in September represents the shortest interval in Global's history between contract signing and first production, it said. The company now holds four contracts in Colombia from which production is being achieved. The share price rose 4p to 147.5p.
Another positive oil report from Columbia came from Emerald Energy, which announced that the Campo Rico number 2 development well in the Campo Rico block in the Llanos basin of Colombia had reached the target Mirador sands and has been temporarily suspended for completion as a production well in January 2005. The Campo Rico number 1 well has been in production since May 2004 and is currently producing oil at a rate of over 1,800 barrels per day and the company's
total production in Colombia now exceeds 2,500 barrels per day. The shares rose 19p to 151.5p. |
