21st Dec 2015 09:30
LONDON (Alliance News) - 88 Energy Ltd shares fell on Monday after the company said uncertainty remains high at the Icewine-1 well after the initial results from coring operations came back mixed.
88 Energy shares were down 23% to 0.388 pence per share on Monday morning.
"Preliminary results remain supportive of the HRZ play at project Icewine; however, evaluation has only just commenced and uncertainty remains high," said Managing Director Dave Wall. "The 96% recovery factor of the first core in the HRZ interval provides us with an excellent opportunity to evaluate the potentially huge HRZ prize over the coming weeks."
The company has been drilling the Icewine-1 well for a number of weeks and intersected its primary target, the HRZ shale formation, last week.
Whilst extracting the core, 88 Energy said a pronounced increase in heavy gas fractions was exhibited in both the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer, and that oil shows were observed in cuttings that were returned to the surface.
Gas chromatograph is used in analysis to test the purity of substances whilst mass spectrometer helps identify the amount and type of chemicals present in samples.
However, the company said once the core was cut into three intervals, an additional analysis of rock chips was undertaken which did not show any cut or fluorescence, things that are usually associated with oil and hydrocarbons.
Overall, the results are mixed, suggesting positive and negative results from the HRZ shale formation.
"The reason for the contradictory results will be determined in due course, along with results from the planned evaluation program on the core," said 88 Energy.
"At this stage, it is too early to make any definitive statements regarding the thermal maturity of the HRZ at the Icewine-1 location; however, it is likely that a gas/condensate phase has been encountered, which bodes well for the thermal maturity model at Project Icewine, in a general sense," the company added.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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