The reason for this astonishing leap is a series of strong updates for Sound's gas discovery at its acreage in northeast Morocco. The Tendrara license, which sits around 120km from the GME pipeline connecting North Africa with the Spanish and Portuguese gas grids, was acquired by Sound Energy in June 2015. The oil firm later partnered with Schlumberger under a field management agreement, under which the oilfield services group would fund a drilling programme.
All was relatively quiet for the best part of a year, until Sound suggested preliminary petrophysical analysis had revealed the presence of a number of gas bearing levels at Tendrara. At the end of June, the company also announced the acquisition of a 55 per cent interest in the Meridja licence, adjacent to Tendrara. Things then started to fly. In the space of six weeks, the company did a small debt and equity financing, received funding interest from its state partner and posted excellent initial flow rates at its TE-6 well.
This week, Sound announced that Tendrara looked to be a "material commercial gas discovery", and had reached a commercial stabilised gas flow rate of half a million standard cubic metres a day, significantly above initial expectations. With the share price surging, chief executive James Parsons sold 1.14m shares at 62p a pop, while subscribing for a further 1.78m soon-to-expire share options priced between 16.5p and 25p.
