London-listed oil and gas explorer Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd shares rose 46 percent on Thursday after it announced a significant oil discovery in Iraq’s Kurdish region. Shares rose to 19 pence after the company made a preliminary estimate of around 300 million

to 500 million barrels of oil in place it found in a shallow zone at
the Shaikan-1 exploration well it is drilling. Iraq’s Kurdish region
was little explored under Saddam Hussain and big discoveries have been
made there by companies that have signed oil and gas deals with the
semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) since the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The KRG and the oil ministry in Baghdad
have had a bitter feud over the contracts and control of oil and gas
resources. The oil ministry has called the deals illegal and said only
it has authority to sign oil and gas contracts. Despite the ongoing
dispute, Baghdad allowed exports to begin from two oilfields in the
Kurdish region in June. Oil from the well flowed at 5,000 to 8,000
barrels per day with an API gravity of 21-22 degrees, Gulf Keystone
said. The company plans to drill deeper with the same well into
formations that could hold more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil, it
said in the statement.

Source: Reuters

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