The Oil Man: Victoria Oil & Gas, Premier Oil

WTI $49.71 +67c, Brent $52.52 +$1.03, Diff -$2.81 +36c, NG $2.94 -3c

Last week was very strong for oil: WTI was up 8.6% and Brent rose 9.3% and 25% off the June lows. A roll call of potential influences on the oil price continue to favour the upside, although much can change.

These include: Nigeria volumes still down; Venezuela nearer basket case status; KSA, UAE, Kuwait cutting; inventories still falling; US dollar remains weak; Shell's Pernis refinery in Rotterdam, at 404,000 barrels of oil per day Europe's biggest, caught fire on Sunday morning and remains down; rig count on Friday showed a gain of only two in oil so month slowed noticeably.

Finally the Vampire Squids, having gone uber-bearish right at the bottom, started squealing and said that they saw "an onset of rebalancing", which shows just why their commodity department is such a joke.

G Sucks turning more positive is the only bearish thing for the oil price right now. Barring this, one might have expected WTI to make an assault on 50 bucks soon.

Victoria Oil & Gas

Quarterly update time from Victoria and things continue to go well across the board. Logbaba gas production had a good quarter, up 11.9% to 14.59 million standard cubic feet per day.

At La-107, net pay of 35 million of high permeability, high porosity gas bearing sands in the Upper Logbaba Formation was slightly better than expected whilst a further 15 million of net gas sand has been encountered in the Lower Logbaba Formation.

After drilling has been completed here they are going to do the sidetrack on La-108 to access the 100 million of gas sands in the original 108 wellbore.

Finances are good despite the cost overrun talked about last time: $7.8 million (£6 million) net revenue, $7.6 million of cash and $20.7 million of net debt as predicted after the recent delay.

After La 107 has been flow tested, VOG plans to enter into a number of long-term gas supply agreements with large offtake customers whilst continuing to supply ENEO under the take or pay agreement.

Longer term, it is envisaged that an agreement can be reached "increasing the current contractual power supply of 50MW to beyond 100MW".

On my recent visit to Cameroon and GDC, I was particularly impressed, not just by the ENEO potential but the way that significant customers in Douala are coming to rely on gas from VOG.

Finally, the company reports that the onshore field development work at Matanda is progressing well, saying that there is an "exciting opportunity to develop gas supply for sale from sources with low capex exposure".

I remain convinced that VOG is not yet properly judged by the market and should be back to the 80p high and then some.

Premier Oil

An exploration and development drilling update from Premier this morning, which has confirmed that Zama-1 has completed with no further hydrocarbons in the deeper target.

I suppose that it was a case of "while we are here we might as well go a bit deeper", but the company say that they werent expecting any more oil than the 1 billion plus barrels already announced.

The Anoa well in Indonesia has completed and will be brought onstream in early August at a higher rate than previously estimated, the reserves on this well alone are expected to be 75-100 billion cubic feet.

The Catcher injection well B12 is being completed and is the last of the 12 pre-first oil. Catcher is ahead of time, under budget and delivering better-than-expected reservoir performance for start up later this year.

With the refinancing finally completed on Friday and good news expected from Tolmount, the shares should hold the recent gain and start heading back to the previous highs - that is if the sector starts to take in that Brent is now $52.50.

And finally...

In the test match, England are on top but still have three wickets to take. South Africa go into lunch at 205-7 chasing 490 odd.

Enable under Frankie Dettori won the King George at Ascot on Saturday in soft going which didn't seem to do much for her turn of speed.

Back to footy, England beat France last night so go into the Euro '17 semi finals where they play the Netherlands on Thursday.

And Lewis Hamilton made a heart-over-head decision yesterday as, having not managed to take the Ferraris, he gave back third place to Bottas. Ferrari had no such qualms as they held up Raikkonen behind Vettel.

This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.