Europa Oil & Gas (LON:EOG) and Union Jack Oil (LON:UJO) said their consortium is fast-tracking the development of the Wressle onshore field in Lincolnshire following the completion of an extended well test.
Significantly, they reckon production in excess of 500 barrels of oil a day per well can be achieved from the Ashover Grit interval.
The operator Egdon Resources (LON:EDR) has come up with a ‘tool kit’ of procedures to combat a localised near well bore formation damage known as a high skin factor, which depressed the previously reported flow rates to around 80 barrels a day.
Further afield, Sound Energy (LON:SOU) has confirmed it has signed heads of terms for its proposed acquisition of a 25% stake in the Sidi Moktar Licences, onshore Morocco, from Maghreb Petroleum Exploration.
Falcon Oil & Gas (LON:FOG, CVE:FO) revealed a significant step forward with its shale gas project in Australia.
It announced a second drilling success in the Beetaloo shale basin which has spurred the decision to bring forward horizontal drilling by a year.
The company told investors that Amungee NW-1, its second Australian shale well, has encountered some 500 metres of gross pay in Velkerri shale intervals, with 150 metres of net pay.
Sector peer 88 Energy (LON:88E) has received the final remaining permit for the upcoming Project Icewine well, onshore Alaska.
The permit to drill has now been approved by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, it said.
It may not sound like energy sector news, but Regency Mines (LON:RGM) has sold the rest of its stake in Alba Mineral Resources (LON:ALBA), one of the companies that has a stake in the so-called 'Gatwick Gusher' at Horse Hill.
Regency raised £81,878 by selling its 4.23% stake in Alba, representing a £17,861 surplus over book cost.
US Oil & Gas (USOP), in a statement after yesterday’s close, announced it had hired Dr Brian McBeth, formerly head of oil at Schroder Securities and senior oil analyst at Cominvest, as an independent non-executive director of the company.
Some other board room news, and David Paxton, a non-executive at Zambia, Eritrea and Slovakia-focused Ortac Resources (LON:OTC), has resigned with immediate effect. The company thanked him for his contribution.
Galasys’s (LON:GLS) chief financial officer Hee Chee Keong is leaving the group, the theme park ticketing specialist announced today.
In a further change to the board, Chin Chee Siong, who has been a non-executive director since the company’s admission to AIM, has also left.
Clarence Lo Siu Lun, 55, will replace Hee as interim CFO, a non-board position.
He has over 24 years' financial management experience working with international companies in the leisure, media and industrial industries in Asia.
Elsewhere in the software sector, Mercia Technologies (LON:MERC), the AIM-listed incubator, has made a follow-on investment in a university spin-out that could revolutionise smartphone and tablet antenna market.
It has stumped up £1.2mln of the £1.5mln being sought in the latest funding round by Smart Antenna Technologies, or SAT for short.
The cash will be used to fund the continued development of the product while SAT holds discussions with several “major mobile and laptop partners”.
In the mining sector, Sunrise Resources (LON:SRES) has intersected high grades of silver in all of its first three drill holes at its Bay State silver project in Nevada.
Best grades included 1,460 grams per tonne (g/t) silver (42.6 oz/ton), 566 g/t and 503 g/t over narrow widths at depths below 70m.
International Mining & Infrastructure Corporation (LON:IMIC) said its Caminex subsidiary has had its local bank accounts in Cameroon unfrozen.
Caminex, which serves as IMIC's principal local operating company in the development of the group's iron ore assets in Cameroon, reopened its headquarters on Tuesday, having filed an administrative appeal against the demand received from the Cameroonian Tax Authorities for payment of tax.
Finally, on the biopharma front, a second study has validated VolitionRx’s (NYSE:VNRX) NuQ blood test as a way potentially to detect pancreatic cancer.
The 4,800-subject cancer trial at Hvidovre Hospital in Denmark showed a 95% detection rate for the disease.
Results were similar to a completely separate study of 59 individuals at Lund University in Sweden. It returned a 92% detection rate for pancreatic cancer cases.