Tiny oil explorer Tangiers Petroleum (TPET) just got a whole lot smaller. Shares in the Aim tiddler tumbled over 75 per cent to 2.4p before being suspended from trading. Tangiers earlier revealed its only planned exploration well, TAO-1, offshore Morocco, which was targeting a whopping 750m barrels of oil-equivalent, failed to find either hydrocarbons or reservoir-quality rock.
We disastrously tipped shares in Tangiers at 30p in late 2012 in anticipation that the company would bring in a partner to pay for the associated well costs. It did - Portugal's Galp Energia farmed in to the licence and paid for most of them - but we dramatically underestimated the downside risks involved in such speculative exploration. Crucially, Tangiers failed to add other prospects and licences to its portfolio during the past year, despite several attempts.
