Tullow Oil in quality gas find

PRODUCTION and exploration group, Tullow Oil, has found good quality gas at its Bangora well in Bangladesh.

The group said the gas, which is of a high quality, with 99.13% combustible gases, flowed at an average in excess of 120 million standard cubic feet per day from a zone at 2,580 3,285 metres.

Tullow chief executive Aidan Heavey said an accelerated appraisal programme at Bangora and at its Lalmai-3 well, Block 9, will now be put into action.

As a result the finds will result in the delivery of gas to the market earlier than expected.

In another exploration development, Pan Andean Resources announced that drilling on the Blackstone Ivory No 1 well has penetrated the upper Anomolina target sands, including the two principal targets.

Initial indications are that the Anomolina sands do not contain commercial quantities of gas.

Gas has, however, been encountered in a smaller zone which could contain up to 1 billion cubic feet of gas, the company said.

Tullow's fortunes in Bangladesh continue to grow as it adds to its potential production base where it already announced a gas discovery at Lalmai in September.

"Following on from the earlier discovery at Lalmai, we have now had gas discoveries at each end of a 40 kilometre long structure," said Heavey.

Despite the additional good news shares in the Irish founded but London registered group were unchanged at 2.06 in Dublin yesterday.

At the start of the month Tullow shares traded up at 2.05, dipping sharply to 1.91 as some investors indulged in some profit taking after significantly improved interim results.

These were published in mid-September when the group reported pre-tax profits of €32.2 million (£22.6m) in the first half of this year.

That was an increase of over 50% on the previous first half year.

Tullow's progress has been slow and much of its earlier promise of major gas finds in Pakistan failed to materialise.