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Ascent Resources, Rockhopper, Sterling Energy, Petroceltic, Cove Energy news briefs

By Fox-Davies Capital

Ascent Resources through its wholly owned subsidiary Ascent Resources Italia srl, announced it will commence the re-drilling of the Fontana-1 well in Hungary in the next few days.  The drilling rig has arrived on location, drilling is expected to take a month and is designed to collect cores to appraise the shallow part of the Anagni structure in the Frosinone Exploration permit in the Latina Valley of Italy.  Re-drilling of the well is necessary as the original well, while having demonstrated the presence of the target formations in a structurally high position, experienced mechanical problems which prevented the collection of core samples.
 

Rockhopper and Desire Petroleum announced that two drilling slots using the Ocean Guardian Drilling rig have been formally assigned to Rockhopper for the upcoming exploration programme in the Falklands. The Ocean Guardian is expected to be in position mid February 2010 to spud the first well of the campaign on the Liz prospect, which is located in Desire's Tranche C acreage. Following the Liz well the Ocean Guardian will then be allocated to Rockhopper to drill their Sea Lion and Ernest prospects.   Advanced  discussions  are ongoing with  BHP Billiton which  may  lead to  BHP taking  an  early drilling slot, and so it is likely that Desire's second well will be the  4th or 5th well in the sequence of this drilling programme.
 

Sterling Energy announced the spudding of the Sangaw North-1 exploration well in Kurdistan. The Sangaw North-1 well, the first exploration well on the Sangaw North Block, will target several prospective Cretaceous and Jurassic aged reservoirs and has a planned depth of 3,660m. Drilling and preliminary evaluation is anticipated to take 180 days.
 

Petroceltic announced that well testing of the Objective Devonian F2 formation at well INW-2 in Algeria has been successful, with a gas well test rate of 16.7MMscfd with a flowing wellhead pressure of 347.5 PSIG on a 96/64" choke setting. Well INW-2 is the 5th and  final well to be drilled on  the Isarene  permit (Blocks 228 & 229a), in the Illizi basin during the current drilling campaign.
 

Cove Energy provided an update on activities. The Belford Dolphin drillship commenced a fully funded four well deep-water programme in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1 Mozambique, operated by Andarko, in December 2009 and is currently drilling on the Windjammer prospect, the first to be evaluated in the drilling schedule. The Company expects to release further updates on its ongoing drilling and evaluation programme in due course.