Falcon Oil & Gas announced the spudding of the Kyalla 117 N2-1 appraisal well in Australia.

There are now 7 companies currently drilling.  In addition to Falcon, there's Petro Matad, I3 Energy, UK Oil & Gas, Alba Mineral Resources, Coro Energy and Empyrean Energy.

 

UKOG and ALBA both updated this week, announcing that casing has been set.  The well will now drill down to the coring point, where three 60 ft cores are planned through the oil-bearing Portland reservoir to ensure the 1000 metre horizontal section is correctly positioned within the most oil-productive zone.  The well will then drill ahead to total depth and be plugged back to the starting point of the horizontal trajectory with HH-2z following directly afterwards.  Both HH-2z Portland and the HH-1 Kimmeridge well are expected to be put into long term production by the end of 2019.

 

Reabold Resources went through its usual placing drama, although a little more than usual since it was raising £24 million this time.  I think what's happening is happening because its placings are extensively forward sold and I doubt they could raise these amounts as actual investments.

 

Solo Oil made an interesting announcement.  It's entered into a binding sale and purchase agreement to acquire a package of non-operated interests in natural gas fields in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.  Three interests are in 14 gas fields, producing c.99% gas / 1% condensate and are mid-life assets with relatively low abandonment expenditure.  The aim is a self-funding balance sheet going forward with follow on development potential funded by re-investment of free cash flow since it's classed as a reverse takeover, it shares have been suspended and it will be possible to express an informed opinion once the admission document is published.

 

Jersey Oil & Gas shares came off sharply when it announced that Equinor had elected not to exercise its three  month option over a 50% equity interest in respect of the blocks containing the Buchan oil field and the J2 oil discovery.  The interesting thing about this is that it was already obvious Equinor was not proceeding from the previous day's announcement that Jersey had by itself made development contractor appointments.  They tried to stabilise the price with the announcement of an independent assessment of resource and valuation estimates showing technically recoverable oil resource volumes of 94.7 million barrels of oil net to JOG and a mid-case contingent resource valuation (NPV10) of its P2498 licence together with a valuation of JOG's 18% share of the Verbier discovery of £791 million.  Jersey's now reduced market capitalisation currently is around £40 million.

 

Moving on, news from all the other companies who have made announcements so far this week will be covered in the Sunday blog and I'll be back on Saturday with another podcast focussed on whatever interesting looking news comes out in the remainder of the week.