Plenty of action in AIM oil and gas today

After Friday’s large rise, Cameroon focused oil explorer, Bowleven fell back to earth today with a 12% drop to 62p. Rumours were rife of another potential takeover bid after the aborted talks with Dragon Oil earlier in the year fell through. No sign of any announcement at the start of the week sent the speculators drifting away once again.

More frustration at Xcite Energy, with the share price stuck stubbornly in the low 70p range despite yet more good news in relation to the company’s North Sea heavy oil Bentley field.

The Company announces that it has now successfully completed the final part of the 9/03b-7 & 7z well lateral well construction work programme. The on-rig process and control packages have been fully commissioned and linked to the pipeline and in-field dynamically-positioned shuttle tanker, Scott Spirit, resulting in the start of the pre-production flow test operations today.

The data gathering will be used to calibrate the existing reservoir model and update the Reserves Assessment Report (RAR) which gave the 2P reserves of 116 mm barrels.

This flow test is planned to be up to 90 days in length and to be conducted at a range of different flow rates – specifically not 500 barrels per day for 90 days to further increase the certainty with respect to the longer term oil, gas and water production profiles and recoverable reserves from the Bentley field.

The usual big sells on the order book appear to suppress any hint of a rise, presumably so that the big boys can max out their warrants. Hugely annoying that the share price is stuck at 52 week lows given the progress made both operationally and in terms of securing reserves based lending (RBL). Someone is having a laugh at private investors expense, and that is very expensive for many!

Ithaca Energy announced today it had commenced drilling on the Hurricane appraisal well in Block 29/10b, which lies within the company’s Greater Stella Area in the UK sector of the central North Sea. After falling to 94p in the aftermath of the production issues at the Athena North Sea field and the failed takeover talks, the shares have rallied to 115p partly as a result of a favourable legal ruling relating to the Jacky North Sea field last week. Good timing from CEO Iain McKendrick,who bought 31,130 shares at  95.75p on June 27^th!

Victoria Oil and Gas announced today it had commenced continuous production operations at Logbaba in Cameroon. Current production is 0.7 million cubic feet per day and is forecast to increase to eight million cubic feet per day by the end of 2012.