This one is from todays "West Australian" .. Oil strike fails to...

This one is from todays "West Australian" ..
Oil strike fails to impress market

By Michael Weir



PERTH-BASED oil companies Woodside Petroleum and Hardman Resources were celebrating yesterday after making another 100 million-barrel oil discovery off the coast of Mauritania.

But the market was not celebrating and investors sold down all three Australian-listed participants, including slashing Hardman's share price more than 10 per cent.

Hardman managing director Ted Ellyard said the market had got it wrong and the Banda prospect, though smaller than expected, was a major discovery.

Project operator Woodside, which has a 35 per cent stake, said yesterday the Banda well had intersected a gross hydrocarbon column of 133 metres with 110m of gas and 23m of oil.

Banda was the third well drilled in the block after last year's Chinguetti discovery and the disappointing Courbine well.

"We are pretty pleased, it is a very good result. Of course the market does not understand it, as it usually doesn't," Mr Ellyard said.

"The market's reacted to the fact there is a lot of gas and they want oil. But what they don't realise is it's a very large structure and that a 23m oil leg means, we think, similar sorts of oil volumes as we got in Chinguetti, which is more than 100 million barrels, plus there is at least a couple of TCF (trillion cubic feet) of gas."

Mr Ellyard said Banda was a different sort of hydrocarbon trap and covered a much bigger area than the Chinguetti discovery.

"We can't call it commercial yet, because we can't do that until we drill some appraisal wells, but we can tell you it's very big," he said.

The participants had been targeting 290 million barrels of recoverable oil, but with the column showing two-thirds gas, the oil content is likely to be about 100 million barrels.

Mr Ellyard said the market should not be disappointed with the gas because there was domestic demand and, in only 300m of water, could be easily developed.

"This is also the first significant gas discovery in Mauritania, which currently relies on imported fuel for all its energy needs," he said.

The Banda well is now going to be plugged and abandoned and an appraisal well is planned for next year.

On the market Woodside ended 14¢ lower at $12.59, Hardman (24.3 per cent) slumped 9¢ to 77¢ on heavy volume and Roc Oil (2.7 per cent) fell 1¢ to $1.42."

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Sounding much more like a very sucessfull drill!