I haven't looked at Vast Exploration Inc before, so I am hoping that those who have (Repobear? IronPyrites?) will correct my errors and omissions. Vast is a independent oil and gas company listed in Canada with the ticker VST.V. It has a market cap of CAN$ 87.5m. In terms of the Directors and Management, nothing looked that interesting to me. A quick search failed to find details of how many shares the directors own. Niko own 10% of the company. Anyone know the history of this? 

Here's a 2 year price graph from Yahoo:

Here's a presentation from the company website. Their principal (only?) asset is the Qara Dargh block in Kurdistan:

The Company believes that proximity of the Qara Dagh Block to recent discoveries at TaqTaq and Miran and the presence of oil seepages on the block make the Qara Dagh structure a low risk prospect with the potential for the discovery of large oil reserves.

Huge potential numbers: http://www.vastexploration.com/index.asp?pid=7&spid=view&linkid=66. Vast have 37% of this block. 27% under the original PSC and 10% under something more complicated.

So this suggests that everything is riding on this Qara Dargh well. It is operated by Niko, who also has 37%. Groundstar has 10%. The well started drilling in May and was originally expected to take 4-5 months, but it has had problems. Firstly they found an unexpectedly thick layer of sandstone (as detailed in the above presentation). The good news is that this could contain hydrocarbons (they won't test until final depth is reached). They had gas shows early in drilling. The bad news is they won't be able to intersect the lower targets (because they will now be much lower) and indeed their whole seismic must surely be viewed with a great deal of suspicion. 

Secondly, they have had prolonged drilling problems, with instability in the Tertiary. In mid December, they finally installed casing down to 2100m and are drilling ahead. In mid November, they said they anticiapted drilling would be completed in JAnuary and said they were funded through to completion (there was a placing at 60c in October). As the mid Dec news release didn't comment on either time or money, I assume the Nov projections are still…

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