By Fox-Davies Capital

Aurelian Oil & Gas announced that it is seeking to raise approximately EUR32 million by way of a conditional placing of new ordinary shares at a price to be determined by way of a bookbuild and set in consultation with the board of directors of the Company. Proceeds of the Placing together with EUR12 million of existing cash will be used to fund the first Siekierki well and up to seven exploration and appraisal wells in the next two years.

Heritage Oil issued an update on the proposed disposal of the Company's entire interest in Block 1 and Block 3A in Uganda. Heritage announced that Tullow Uganda Limited has exercised its right to pre-empt the sale of the Disposed Assets on the same terms and conditions as agreed in the Sale and Purchase agreement entered into between Heritage and ENI International B.V., on 18 December 2009. Completion of the transaction remains subject, inter alia, to approval by the Ugandan Government. The Government will determine which transaction to approve (either the acquisition by Eni or Tullow's pre-emption of such acquisition) in its role as final arbiter.

Petroceltic announced that it has been notified that Iberdrola has sold 215,769,231 ordinary shares, being all of its 15.68% shareholding in Petroceltic, on the 15th January 2010. The shares were placed with a group of existing and new Petroceltic shareholders at 16p per share, a 1p per share premium to the previous day's closing price. Following the sale, Iberdrola no longer holds a shareholding in Petroceltic. In line with the provisions of the Shareholder's agreement entered into by Petroceltic and Iberdrola on 30 June 2008, Iberdrola's representative on the Board of Petroceltic, Pablo Fuentes-Cantillana, has resigned as a director of the Company with immediate effect.

Stratex International announced further encouraging gold results from its exploration programme on the 37 sq km Shehagne Exclusive Exploration Licence, in northern Ethiopia. With these positive exploration results the Company will now proceed with its previously announced option to acquire 60% of the licence. Channel-chip results define an extensive zone of gold mineralisation 900m in length and more than 200m in width within the Tsemmetti target area. Best intersections include: 11m grading 4.39 g/t gold and 40m grading 1.40 g/t Au. Selective individual and composite vein samples assaying up to 66.30 g/t Au (2.13 oz/t Au)

Conroy Diamonds announced that it has completed two inclined diamond drill holes, totalling 310 metre, in the north-western corner of its Clay Lake gold anomaly in Co. Armagh which returned positive gold results and demonstrated the presence of a broad zone of mineralisation. The Clay Lake anomaly covers an area of approximately 141 hectares and has returned the highest gold-in-soil values ever recorded by the Company on its Irish exploration licences. It is larger than the Clontibret anomaly (125ha), 7km to the south-west in Co. Monaghan, where the Company has established a JORC-compliant gold resource of over one million ounces. One of the drill holes at Clay Lake was 157m long and reached a vertical depth of approximately 110m. It intersected 3m of 1.57g/t gold from 22.5m, followed by a 63m intersection of 0.62g/t gold and 1g/t silver from 90.5m, the first 9m of which averaged 1.48g/t gold and 1g/t silver. Arenites and argillites (shales) were the main lithologies in this hole.

Medusa Mining announced that it has completed a re-interpretation of the resource model for the Co-O Mine with the sole purpose of correcting inconsistencies to the east of the Oriental Fault between previous drillhole based interpretations and the on-going development on Level 5 from the Agsao Shaft. The revised resource is JORC and NI 43-101 compliant. A large number of drill hole intersections are yet to be included in the re-interpretated resource model. This re-interpretation has marginally decreased the Inferred Resources but maintained the Indicated Resources taking into account production and stockpiles. This now provides an accurate development based model for expanding the mine to the east. Thirty-five veins have now been modelled with resources and more are expected to be identified. Future resource updates will be done annually in June-July. In addition, estimates of the conceptual potential target size of the Co-O Mine using various parameters indicate a range from 3,000,000 ounces in 9,300,000 tonnes to 7,000,000 ounces in 22,000,000 tonnes using a grade range of 9 to 11 g/t gold with a preferred average grade.