Shares in Rockhopper Exploration (LON:RKH) soared more than 30% to 49p this morning on news that the North Falkland Basin oil and gas exploration company had struck oil in well 14/10-2 on the Sea Lion prospect. The first well in Rockhopper’s Falklands campaign has reached a depth of 2,744 metres and initial data collected indicates that it has made the first oil discovery in the North Falkland Basin, the company said.
Rockhopper has run a suite of wireline logs and logging data collected so far indicated that the well has encountered a 150 metre gross interval of sand and shales. The data shows that the well has 53 metres of net pay distributed in multiple pay zones, the thickest of which has a net pay of 25 metres. These pay zones have an average porosity of 19%.
The company said it now intends to collect additional logging information prior to making a decision whether to plug and abandon the well, or to suspend the well for future testing. It is also considering whether to drill an appraisal well on Sea Lion later during the current drilling campaign. Separately, Rockhopper confirmed that it still intended to drill the Ernest prospect in the fourth slot of the overall Falklands Drilling programme, which is being carried out with fellow explorers, Desire Petroleum and Falklands Oil and Gas.
Sam Moody, Rockhopper’s managing director, said: “We are extremely excited by the results of this well. While we are presently acquiring additional data, current indications are that we have made the first oil discovery in the North Falkland Basin. We will now focus on analysing in more detail the data gathered from the well, in addition to continuing preparations for the drilling of our Ernest prospect later in the year.”
