Dana's Tornado Prospect yields more oil

Dana Petroleum (DNX) is celebrating the discovery of oil and gas in its sidetrack drilled on the Tornado Prospect just off the coast of Shetland in the UK.

The drilling of the sidetrack was prompted after Dana discovered oil and gas in the main 204/13-1 well in mid-October.

Dana's chief executive, Tom Cross commented: "We are delighted to have discovered oil & gas in both the original Tornado Well and the sidetrack well. A thorough analysis of data gathered is already underway."

Faroe Petroleum, which owns a 7.5% interest in the project, echoed Dana's positivity, hailing the discovery as 'exciting.' Faroe said that the results of the preliminary logging data has exceeded hydrocarbon expectations and were of better-than-forecast reservoir quality. 

This data has had a positive impact on two of its own licences on which it's starting a new programme of analysis, the AIM-listed company added.

The FTSE-250 oil exploration company said the sidetrack was drilled to delineate the discovery and determine the overall size of the new field. 

OMV, which owns a 35% interest and is the operator of the licence, drilled the sidetrack to a depth of 8654 feet, the company said. It drilled approximately 120 feet of sandstone with average porosity of 29%. The original well held oil and gas which are around 90 feet thick, with average porosity of 28.5%. The company will now focus on the results of the extensive fluid tests underway.

The findings come after what has been a choppy exploration programme for the company in recent times. At the end of October, Dana was buoyed by the discovery of oil at its Jetta well in offshore Norway.

Dana teamed up with Norway's own Det norske oljeselskap, as well as ExxonMobil, Bridge Energy and Petoro to explore the well but the oil found was of a lesser thickness than expected, prompting the partners to drill a sidetrack in the hope of discovering commercial promise.

Just earlier that month Dana had been left disappointed when its exploration operations in the Gulf of Suez Egypt came up dry.

Following the Tornado Prospect discover, Dana's shares rose 4p to 1,285p.