Circle Oil reports potential find in Tunisian well

CIRCLE OIL, the international oil and gas exploration and development company listed on London’s AIM, has reported a potential oil find in the first well drilled by the group in Tunisia.

Further exploration will be carried out and the company expects to declare the find commercial before the year end, according to John McKeon, head of business development at the company.

Speaking from Tunisia, Mr McKeon, the second largest shareholder in the group, said he “was cautiously optimistic” adding that a pipeline is close by, to facilitate early production if required.

Two more wells are due to be drilled in Tunisia and the company has $35m (€23.4m) funding in place to carry out the current programme.

Mr McKeon said Circle has a gas discovery in Morocco which should go into production in the first quarter of 2008 and up to eight further wells will be drilled over the next 18 to 24 months in areas that have delivered gas finds in the past.

At present Mr McKeon, chairman Kevin Anderson and David Hough, chief executive of Circle, are the largest shareholders.

However, in July the group signed a $30m convertible loan deal with Kuwaiti group KGL Petroleum which will become the largest stakeholder when the loan is converted to shares.

David Hough said in a statement yesterday: “We are encouraged by the initial results of the Zita-1 well. If testing and evaluation are successful we hope this would be followed by an early appraisal well programme.”