Oil and gas explorers with a strong track record of success are highly prized – witness Shell's near-£1bn cash bid for Cove Energy this week – and a string of explorers with busy drilling programmes coming up could see their shares rise sharply if the wells are successful. Here's our run-down of the wells drilled already – and the ones to watch.
■ Tullow Oil's abnormally high drilling success rate has continued. Its latest strike came offshore Sierra Leone, where the Jupiter-1 exploration well intersected 30m of hydrocarbon 'pay' (rock formation containing hydrocarbons). Tullow holds a 20 per cent interest in the block alongside operator Anadarko (55 per cent) and Repsol (25 per cent).
■ Anadarko has also enjoyed drilling success on the opposite side of the African continent as operator of a venture in which junior explorer Cove Energy, for which Shell offered £992m this week, holds an 8.5 per cent interest. The Lagosta-3 well encountered 176m of natural gas pay and, significantly, confirms the continuity of the well to previous Lagosta wells and the Windjammer and Camarao wells further north.
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■ Faroe Petroleum recently suffered a rare exploration setback when the Kalvklumpen prospect in the Norwegian North Sea came up dry. But one of the most attractive features of Faroe's strategy is its high frequency of drilling, and results from the company's T-Rex exploration well in the Norwegian Sea, expected shortly, could restore confidence.
■ Africa-focused Afren also has a busy drilling programme this year, largely focused on Ghana and Nigeria.
■ Borders & Southern has started drilling the first deepwater well in the South Falkland basin, where the prospect sizes could be an order of magnitude larger than Rockhopper Exploration's Sea Lion discovery in the North Falkland basin. The first Borders' well is targeting the Darwin East prospect, with results expected before the end of March. Borders will then drill a second well before Falkland Oil & Gas gets use of the rig to also drill two prospects, the first of which will be Loligo, which has prospective resources of a huge 4.7bn barrels.
■ Range Resources and Red Emperor Resources are drilling a frontier well in the Puntland region of Somalia. This is the first well drilled there in over 20 years and is targeting over 300m barrels of oil.
