Chariot shares rally as drilling progresses

The share price of African-focused oil and gas exploration company, Chariot, this week continued its rally on the London Stock Exchange as drilling on the Kabeljou exploration well on the Nimrod Prospect entered its fourth week.
Chariot’s share price took a major beating after the explorer announced in May that it had found no oil off the Namibian coast. Chariot’s share price fell to a yearly low of 71 pounds upon confirmation that no commercial hydrocarbons were found in the Tapir South exploration well in Northern Block 1811A and the well will be plugged and abandoned.
Tapir South, the first well of Chariot’s four to five well drill programme, was rated as having a 25% chance of success and was targeting a resource potential of some 604 million barrels of oil but after reaching a total depth of 4879 meters, the well was found to contain no commercial hydrocarbons. At that time, Chariot had no firm timeline when to secure a drilling contract with a rig operator, but the company seized the opportunity when a rig, en route to Angola, became available for a short while.
Chariot’s decision, together with farm-out partners, Petrobras and BP , to go ahead with the drilling of the Kabeljou exploration well late July seems to be paying off despite the setback on the Tapir South well. After initial scepticism from investors, Chariot’s share price has continued its strong run gaining 2.01% Thursday morning to 114.00 British pounds.
Analysts say the Nimrod prospect is a much better prospect than the Tapir South well. They say the geology between the two prospects is so different they could practically be located on different continents. Also at an estimated 4.9 billion barrels of potentially recoverable oil it {Nimrod} is a much larger prospect than Tapir South.
The drilling and logging operations are expected to take approximately 60 days. The drilling location is 77 kilometres offshore Namibia in 360 metres of water with an estimated total drilling depth of approximately 3,350 metres true vertical depth subsea.
Company spokesperson, Annabel Redford said Wednesday that further announcements will be made when the well results are known but no further information is available at this stage.