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Proactive news summary, featuring Wentworth, Aminex, Hurricane Energy, Action Hotels, Telit Communications & more

Published: 01:43 16 Sep 2014 AEST

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Tanzania gas firms made significant gains on Monday with Aminex soaring over 50% and Wentworth Resources (LON:WRL) up over 10%.

It comes with the news that Wentworth’s Mnazi bay development has secured a long term sales contract to feed a new gas pipeline which will supply Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam.

Wentworth, which has 31% participating interest in the venture, said the partners are contracted to supply to up to a maximum 80 mmcf/day of natural gas during the first eight months. 

Thereafter there is an option to increase output to a maximum 130 mmcf/day of natural gas for up to a 17-year supply period.

Perhaps most significant, according to City broker Investec, is the deal opens up more than US$20mln of cash flows starting next year.

Investec repeated a ‘buy’ recommendation and a 65p price target, meanwhile, rival broker Panmure Gordon also repeated a ‘buy’ and upgraded its target price.

North Sea focussed Hurricane Energy (LON:HUR) advanced on Monday, rising over 12% at one point, after expectation-beating analysis of the Lancaster project, a fractured basement oil play in the West of Shetland region.

Having reported in June flow rates of almost 10,000 barrels per day from a recently drilled well, third party analysis has now indicated flows of up to 20,000 barrels a day are possible.

"Such a level of productivity means that an early phase of field development and commercial production could be initiated with the addition of only one more horizontal well," said chief executive Dr Robert Trice.

Action Hotels (LON:AHCG), operator of mid-market destinations in the Middle East and Australia, reported a strong operating performance as it posted its half term report.

It revealed that revenues rose 28% to US$19.5mln in the six months to June, the average daily rate was up just over 10% at U$113 and occupancy rose to 82%, up two percentage points.

While earnings before interest, tax and depreciation were static at US$4.6mln, this reflected US$1.7mln-worth of investment in the expansion push.

Machine-to-machine technology specialist Telit (LON:TCM) revealed its Cloud-based platform, m2mAIR, is really starting to fly.

The wireless communication specialist’s business unit saw revenue soar by 283% to US$9.2 million in the first half of 2014, from US$2.4 million in the same period of last year. That contributed to a 27.4% advance in the group’s sales to US138.2mln from US$108.5mln the year before. It is the fifth year in a row that Telit has notched up double-digit percentage revenue growth.

Monitoring and diagnostic devices developer Sphere Medical (LON:SPHR) has kicked things up a notch this year as it prepares for the commercialisation of its Proxima platform.

Dr Wolfgang Rencken, who took over as chief executive officer in February from founder Stephen Hendry, said he believes the company is well on the way towards becoming a commercially successful company after hitting a number of landmarks in the first half of the year.

Oxford Pharmascience (LON:OXP) is ready to scale-up manufacturing of its reduced gastric irritation (GI) formulation of naproxen. The company has successfully synthesised taste masked naproxen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), as it moves towards further proof of concept evaluation.

Coloured gemstone miner Gemfields (LON:GEM) has broadened its portfolio to include sapphires from Sri Lanka.

Gemfields, which already mines and markets emeralds and rubies, has set up a joint venture with East West Gem Investments that will see it acquire 75% of sixteen exploration licences in Sri Lanka for US$400,000.

Gemfields said it wants to apply in Sri Lanka the exploration and mining knowledge gleaned from its operations Zambia (emeralds) and Mozambique (rubies).

Elsewhere, Ferrex (LON:FRX) is making good progress bringing its Nayega manganese project in Togo into early production. The plan is to develop the operation in two phases: a low capex open-pit, followed by a sintering and blast furnace facility.

On Monday, Ferrex said the “majority” of the phase-one definitive feasibility study has been completed, so design and schedules for a 250,000-tonne-a-year mine are done, as is the tailings dam design and report.

W Resources (LON:WRES) said the La Parrilla tailings project in south-west Spain should hit target production by this month, or next. It is aiming to produce 25 tonnes of 60-63% tungsten trioxide per month. The update follows the restart of operations after a planned shutdown.  

Landore Resources (LON:LND) said a now completed drill programme at the Junior Lake project in Ontario confirmed significant gold/copper mineralisation.

The work at the B4-7 east area confirmed that a mineralised structure first delineated in the scorpion zone extended eastwards adjacent to the B4-7 deposit. The firm said on Monday that the overall potential strike extension of this structure is 3km.

Strategic Minerals (LON:SML) has kicked off work to assess whether material from its Cobre iron project could be suitable for the heavy dense media (HDM) market.

HDM is a high grade iron product used in coal production, water filtration and other industries. The firm says this will add value to Strategic's existing business as HDM is not directly linked to the iron ore price and generally sells at a significant premium to normal iron ore product.

Alecto Minerals (LON:ALO) has welcomed partner Centamin’s (LON;CEY) decision to continue to fund exploration of the Wayu Boda tenement in Ethiopia.

Centamin needs to pay for US$1.8 mln worth of exploration over a two year period to maintain a 51% interest. The agreement between the companies also extends to the Aysid Metekel gold project in north-west Ethiopia, where Centamin has already committed initial expenditure of US$1.2mln.

Mozambique coal miner Beacon Hill Resources (LON:BHR) is to raise up to £1.25mln through a placing with institutional shareholders.

Mosman Oil & Gas (LON:MSMN) will also raise cash by selling new shares, launching a £1.3mln placing to help pay for an ongoing drilling and testing programme at the Petroleum Creek project.

The oil junior’s next well is due to spud imminently with the Crestal 2 well planned to test Eight Mile and Cobden Limestone formations known to contain oil in offset wells. The planned work will also include testing Crestal-2, as well as the previously drilled Cross Roads-1 and Crestal-1 over the coming weeks.

Elsewhere, Africa Oilfield Logistics (LON:AOL) has achieved a significant milestone in Kenya by leasing land in the north of the country that will form the site of one of a number of logistics hubs.

The “sizable” plot has been taken on a 15-year lease by the company’s main subsidiary Ardan Risk & Support Services.

Australian Strategic Materials signs US$600 million LoI

Rowena Smith, CEO and managing director of Australian Strategic Materials Ltd (ASX:ASM, OTC:ASMMF), joins Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss the company’ s Dubbo Project, in Central West New South Wales. This project aims to extract and process critical minerals and rare earth...

9 hours, 11 minutes ago