Drilling update from Range/Red Emperor and Chariot kicks off Nimrod

Red Emperor Resources, Range Resources and Horn Petroleum today announced a further update from the Shabeel North Well in Puntland, Somalia.

With a follow up to the recent “water not oil” announcement (!) which sent the shares plummeting, the well reached a depth of 2,200 meters with the logging indicating “that the most prospective looking zone in the well was the upper Jesomma sand interval that had already been confirmed by testing to contain fresh water and thus no further testing could be justified.”

They have now decided to deepen the well to 3400 metres to evaluate the potential of the Lower Cretaceous and Jurassic sections with results due in 2-3 weeks. It seems unlikely that further drillling will change the prognosis and options are thin on the ground for both Red Emperor and Range with limited resources at their disposal for further wells.

Chariot Oil and Gas moved up marginally to 115p today after announcing that drilling operations have commenced on the Nimrod prospect offshore Namibia. This is the second well in Chariot’s 4 to 5 well drilling programme offshore Namibia using the Ocean Rig Poseidon drill ship in the Southern Licence area.

Chariot has a 25% equity interest, Petrobras Oil and Gas BV has a 30% interest with the operator BP Exploration (Namibia) Limited having 45%. The drilling and logging operations are expected to take approximately 60 days. The prospect is anticipated to hold an unrisked prospective resource of 4.9 billion barrels of oil.

In May, Chariot announced a duster on the Tapir South prospect, on the Northern licence.