Tullow Oil Makes Significant New Find Offshore Ghana

26th Jul 2010 07:21

By James Herron Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN) said Monday it has found a major new field offshore Ghana, continuing its outstanding run of oil exploration success in Africa. The Owo-1 well, close to the existing Tweneboa oil and gas discovery, "intersected a significant column of excellent quality light oil," with 53 meters of net pay, Tullow said in a statement, adding that "results of drilling, wireline logs and samples of reservoir fluids have established Owo as a major new oil field requiring further appraisal." Tullow's exploration director Angus McCoss said, "Given this success, we are immediately drilling an appraisal sidetrack to further assess the size of this find. Accelerated appraisal drilling will now focus on maturing the resources in both Owo and the adjacent Tweneboa accumulation towards commercialisation." Tullow had previously described Owo-1 as a "make or break" well for the maxiumum resource estimate in the Tweneboa area of 1.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Following a two-year run of exploration success that saw its market value almost triple, Tullow shares have stabilized and are little changed over the last six months, although this latest discovery may give new impetus to the company's value. They closed Friday at 1179 pence, giving the company a market value of about GBP10.46 billion. -By James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9317; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 26, 2010 02:21 ET (06:21 GMT)