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Proactive weekly oil and gas news summary, including Mosman Oil & Gas, Gulf Keystone Petroleum, Empyrean Energy and Falcon Oil & Gas

Published: 11:00 03 Apr 2015 BST

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A fairly busy week in the oil space with Mosman Oil & Gas (LON:MSMN) yesterday announing it is to accelerate preparations for a new drilling programme on the Merchison permit in New Zealand.

Merchison’s hydrocarbon potential has been reinforced by recent technical work, the company said, and it now intends to start a drill campaign by mid-2015.

The company has raised £500,000 of new capital via a share placing, arranged by SP Angel, and this is expected to support the new campaign.

Elsewhere, in big news, the new Falklands oil drilling campaign got off to a flyer, as the Zebedee exploration well discovered oil and gas, and the results are better than expected.

Zebedee could potentially be a bolt-on to the Sea Lion oil field, and as such today’s result could have significant implications for the development project.

It is good news for exploration partners Falkland Oil & Gas (LON:FOGL), Premier Oil (LON:PMO) and Rockhopper (LON:RKH); which respectively own 40%, 36% and 24%.

The Zebedee well encountered 25 metres of net oil pay in the Zebedee sand, and found 17.5 metres of net gas pay in the Hector sand. 

Both reservoir intervals are said to be good quality. A third interval, potentially an extension of the Beverley sand, also contained 2.5 metres of net oil pay.

Oil and gas discoveries in the Zebedee well represent a great start to the new offshore exploration campaign in the Falklands, but it is hard to decipher investor reactions to the success.

Empyrean Energy (LON:EME) confirmed it has secured additional financing for its continuing participation in the Sugar Loaf project, in the Eagle Ford shale, Texas.

It comes after the group decided in February against selling the company. It has a 3% stake in the Marathon Oil operated field development project, which continues to grow apace.

Macquarie Bank has now agreed to extend an existing financing facility, to make available an additional US$11mln. Empyrean currently has US$21.67mln drawn on the facility.

The position of Falcon Oil & Gas (LON:FOG), with over US$18mln in the bank at the last update, is that it can withstand several more bouts of the jitters as Saudi Arabia and the US slug it out for oil supremacy.

Not just that, it is on the cusp of something potentially very exciting, even if the true worth will only be fully captured once the price of  a barrel of crude moves back to more normal levels.

Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LON:GKP) shares fell this week after a share sale raised US$40mln to bolster the group’s finances while it continues negotiations to potentially sell the company.

The Kurdistan-based oil company is issuing 85.9mln new shares priced at 32p each to new and existing institutional investors.

The cash injection adds to the company’s cash balance of around US$86mln, and comes amid uncertainty over payment schedules and after the company has called on some of its lenders to waive certain financial covenants.

A new third party evaluation of Sound Oil’s (LON:SOU) Italian portfolio has confirmed and validated the scale of the assets, the company told investors.

The competent person's report (or CPR) identified 4bn cubic feet of proved and probable (2P) gas reserves, as well as 5.7bn cubic feet of possible gas reserves.

Contingent resources totalled 66.7bn cubic feet according to the CPR’s ‘best case’ estimate, while the estimate of prospective resources came in at 77bn cubic feet.

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