Caribbean gas junior Touchstone Exploration (TXP) has announced another major find at the Trinidad and Tobago onshore licence area of Ortoire. Excited investors pushed its share price up 30 per cent in the opening minutes of trading in London, to 114p.
The company was already trading at four times its early-2020 valuation before this third discovery, following positive results from the Cascadura and Coho wells.
Chinook-1 had “significant hydrocarbon accumulations”, Touchstone said, although further testing is needed to determine if the well is commercially viable. The 10,000-feet-deep well saw over 600 net feet (183m) of net gas pay (the part of a reservoir that looks to be economically recoverable), all towards the deepest parts of the well. Chief executive Paul Braay said the company would now shift its focus to a fourth well in the licence area, Cascadura Deep.
Despite Chinook-1 being 1.5km from the Cascadura well, the company said it was in a separate gas-holding structure. The next steps for Chinook will be completion and production testing in the March quarter of 2021.
