Proactive news summary including Lansdowne Oil & Gas, Dragon Oil, Afferro Mining and Bushveld Minerals

Oil stocks and mining firms came under the spotlight today with Lansdowne Oil & Gas (LON:LOGP) saying that its projects in the Celtic Sea have been substantially de-risked as it continues to progress farm-out talks with interested parties.

This morning the company reported on a technical study, based on analysis of seismic data as farm-out discussions for drilling on its Amergin, Midleton and Rosscarbery licences continue.

The work indicated the likely presence of gas in the Midleton, SE Rosscarberry and Galley Head accumulation and results for the Amergin oil prospect indicate that the Lower and Basal Wealden reservoirs - which are proven to be productive on the adjacent Barryroe field - appear to be present at Amergin.

Shares in the firm were lifted 2.83% today to 54.5 pence.

Dragon Oil (LON:DGO) has extended an agreement for transport and sale of its crude until the end of next year.

The firm has secured the deal with Socar Trading for all its anticipated export entitlement production until December 31, 2014 via Azerbaijan, it said in a brief statement.

Also in the sector, Merchant Securities put out a note on Xcite Energy (LON:XEL, CVE:XEL), saying that a farm-out deal  for the Bentley oil field will focus investor attention on the company.

The City broker rates Xcite as a ‘buy’ with a 167.8p price target.

In mining, Landore Resources’ (LON:LND) Junior Lake project in Ontario is on track for production in 2015-16 after it announced a significant increase in indicated nickel resources.

Drilling on B4-7, one of three main deposits at Junior Lake, has boosted the indicated open pit and underground resource to 2.67mln tonnes at 1.24% nickel equivalent or 33,428 tonnes of contained metal.

The previous estimate for B4-7 was 26,521 tonnes of contained metal.

Landore shares rose 3.92% to stand at 6.63 pence.

Elsewhere, Afferro (LON:AFF, CVE:AFF) has confirmed that Indian giant Jindal Steel and Power is one of a number of the junior miner's potential suitors. 

It confirmed last month that it had received bid approaches, which has helped lift the share price.

Afferro, whose major asset is the 5.2bn tonne Nkout iron ore deposit in Cameroon, confirmed today it remains in “active discussions with all potential offerers”. Shares rose 3.65% to 85.25 pence.

Also hitting the news today was Fox Marble (LON:FOX), which has acquired the rights to extract marble from a quarry in the west of the country, close to its red marble quarry at Cervenilla.

The deal has been struck with Drini Company, a Kosovan business that has been using the Drini quarry for aggregates extraction.

Under the terms of the agreement, Fox Marble has the rights for 20 years to extract marble from the 2.5 hectare site, which it says is of good quality, with sufficient quantities for commercial exploitation.

Shares were unchanged at 17 pence each.

Also today, further drilling of the P-Q zone at Bushveld Minerals’ (LON:BMN) iron ore project has reinforced the promising results of previous drilling of the main magnetite layer (MML).

A further 926 metres of drilling has been completed on the vanadium-rich MML, with the aim of extending the MML resource along strike and increasing the confidence level of the resource to at least the indicated category.

Assay results have been received for the majority of these boreholes, reflecting mineralisation consistent with the previously reported MML resource in respect of both grade and thickness along strike as well as at depth, the firm said.

Bushveld shares rose 2.97% to stand at 13 pence.