An oily day to say the least.
It was the tale of two companies: Royal Dutch Shell PLC (LON:RDSA) and BP PLC (LON:BP.), which, oddly, broke with convention and decided to report third quarter results on the same day is how Proactive framed 'Super Tuesday'.
But there was plenty of other news around to pique interest.
Away from those big oil guns, small cap Providence Resources PLC (LON:PVR LN) revealed it had chosen the rig contractor for its deep water Druid well in the Porcupine Basin off the south-west coast of Ireland.
A letter of intent has been sent to the drill rig operator, which was not named, with a contract expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.
The potential here is huge as the block is estimated to contain around 3bn barrels of oil, while Drombeg, below it, could be host to a further 1.9bn.
Sticking to the sector and Northern Petroleum Plc (LON:NOP) today reported a 30% increase in reserves at its assets in Canada.
Consultant McDaniel & Associates puts the total proven plus probable total (2P) now at 1.91mln barrels equivalent with an estimated value of US$23.1mln.
Most of the increase came from the Rainbow assets that were acquired in January and saw a 46% uplift.
Mining was also shovelling out some notable stories on the day.
Tethyan Resources PLC (LON:TETH) kicked off drilling at Rudnitza porphyry on the Suva Ruda exploration permit located in Serbia.
Four to five holes covering 2,500 metres are planned to target a significant copper-molybdenum-gold anomaly identified by recent soil sampling.
The drilling will confirm the historic drilling results and to test for extensions to the mineralisation at depth, the junior said.
Elsewhere, URU Metals Ltd (LON:URU) unveiled plans for next steps at its Zebediela nickel project in South Africa, which includes drilling and updating the resource estimate.
A previous NI 43-101 resource for the site, which lies 7km north east of Mokopane and less than 5km from a national highway, showed an indicated resource of 485.4 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.245% nickel.
The new programme planned for 2017 includes drill testing potential extensions, infill drilling and metallurgical studies.
Over to the Philippines and a drop in grade as expected in the September quarter meant fewer gold ounces were produced from its Co-O gold mine in the Philippines, said Medusa Mining Ltd (ASX:MML).
The firm produced 21, 157 ounces of the yellow metal at an average head grade of 5.26 g/t (grammes per tonne) against 25,429 ounces at 6.32 g/t in the preceding June quarter.
The drop in grade was expected mostly because of 9% more mine development in the quarter compared to the previous three months.
An initial induced polarisation (IP) survey undertaken at the Concordia copper project in South Africa by Galileo Resources PLC (LON:GLR) has yielded encouraging results.
The company focused on the most prospective area of Concordia, the Homeep trend, where copper has already been identified.
According to Colin Bird, Galileo’s chairman, the signature there was “so strong” that the company has elected to home in on it for a short period before moving on to conduct a more general survey.
Also, Advanced Oncotherapy (LON:AVO) has appointed the head of its proton beam cancer treatment subsidiary to its main board.
Professor Stephen Myers took over as executive chairman of Advanced Oncotherapy’s ADAM subsidiary a year ago and has overseen the recent development of the LIGHT proton beam technology.
Prior to joining Advanced Oncotherapy, Meyers worked at CERN in Geneva where from 2009-2013 he was Director of Accelerators and Technology and worked extensively on the Hadron Collider project. He was also Head of Medical Applications at CERN from 2014.
Fianally, Horizon Discovery Group PLC (LON:HZD) has secured more than £800,000 worth of projects for its high-throughput molecular screening platform as it continues to strengthen its order book.
The revenue generated from these new orders is expected to be realised in the final quarter of this year and early next year, it said.