Am I the only one who thinks that private investors are always the last to know on AIM?

There have been some interesting share price movements in recent weeks in African focused oil and gas explorer, Chariot Oil & Gas. No accusations of corse, but the price movement the week before this weeks well result RNS is telling perhaps about leaks in AIM oil companies before news or perhaps it is just conincidental with the overall market? 😉

I’m sure investors in the likes of Desire Petroleum, Xcite Energy and others are well used to it. Not so Rockhopper (nice one Sam Moody), which perhaps illustrates its about management attitude as well as loose tongues on the rig! Investors in Xcite Energy will remember the huge spike in the share price in the days before the reserves upgrade to 116mm barrels as well as before the director share buys last summer. Information is power in the City!

On Monday, Chariot announced the results of its Tapir South (1811/5-1) exploration well in the Northern Block 80km offshore Namibia. Preliminary logging results indicated no commercial hydrocarbons were found and the well was plugged and abandoned.

The well was originally spudded in early April with a 25% chance of success (COS) with an un-risked prospective resource potential of 604 million barrels of oil.  It was the second well to be drilled in the basin.

The shares fell from a around 147p to a low of 87p on the day and 74p on the week, with the drop exacerbated with the general sell off in AIM oil and gas stocks this week. They bounced back 6% to 80p yesterday on news that directors including Chief Exec Paul Welch bought shares at 77p-78p.

I want small investors to have the same access to information as the “big boys” and I fear that relationships in AIM circles are sometimes played to advantage of those parties in the inner circle and of course, to the detriment to the private investor. The recent action by the FSA indicates that the cosy world in the Square Mile of “off the record” chats may finally be coming under added scrutiny. The current situation is frustrating (for want of a better word!) for those who are not in the inner circle of information.

Here’s the CHAR chart….

Contrarian Investor UK