UK Oil & Gas shares rise ahead of weekend well test in Turkey

UK Oil & Gas PLC (AIM:UKOG) shares advanced in Friday’s deals after it reported oil shows in the Pinarova-1 well, in Turkey, where drilling will continue following a phase of testing,

The company, in a statement, said oil shows were observed in drill cuttings from depths between 358 to 400 metres. It has now decided to conduct ‘open hole swabbed flow testing’ for this zone, due to its encouraging observations.

Drilling is expected to resume following those tests, which are expected to run over the coming weekend – albeit, UKOG cautioned that it may be impacted by the end of Ramadan, which happens tonight and may affect timings over the weekend.

Subsequent drill will continue down through an underlying zone which is “coincident with the uppermost and strongest seismic amplitude anomaly”, the company told investors.

UKOG highlighted that Pinarova-1 was designed to test a working hypothesis that an active oil seep found last summer is fed directly from an underlying light oil accumulation. This theory anticipated that the accumulation could span some 9 kilometres in areal extent and could be present at depths between 300 and 645 metres.

The AIM-quoted exploration company holds a 50% interest in Pinarova which is located some 6 kilometres from the Basur oil discovery well which was drilled in 1964.

In London, UKOG shares were up 19% changing hands at 0.086p each valuing the company at £17.83mln.