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Proactive news summary - Dragon Oil, Petroceltic, Horse Hill, Iofina, IMIC, Galantas, KEFI, Beowulf, Horizon Discovery, Galasys

Published: 02:26 07 Oct 2014 AEDT

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Shares in Petroceltic International (LON:PCI) jumped over 22%  as it revealed it is in ‘detailed’ discussions over a £500mln bid from Dragon Oil (LON:DGO).

In a short stock exchange announcement, it said the offer had been pitched at 230p a share or a 29% premium to Friday’s closing price.

The proposed price appears acceptable to Petroceltic’s board, which said it would recommend an offer at the indicated price.

Dragon Oil has been on the acquisition trail for a number of years and City experts see the strategic sense in the proposed deal, beyond the immediate production boost, which would add 25,000 bopd to take Dragon’s daily output past 100,000 barrels.

The eagerly awaited conventional well being drilled at Horse Hill near Gatwick has recorded oil shows at a depth of between 2,100 to 2,140 feet.

A host of small cap explorers make up the consortium drilling the well: Solo Oil (LON:SOLO); Regency Mines (LON:RGM); Alba Minerals (LON:ALBA); UK Oil & Gas (LON:UKOG); Stellar Resources (LON:STG) and Doriemus (LON:DOR) are all involved.

They reported today that Horse Hill-1 intersected the Portland Sandstone over the weekend and identified the oil by mud logging.

The well’s primary oil reservoir targets lie in the Jurassic age Portland Sandstone and the Corallian Sandstone. There are also a number of secondary oil targets in the Jurassic formations.

Another riser was Iofina (LON:IOF), which uses a process it devised to extract iodine from the bi-product of onshore oil and gas wells, as it released two pieces of good news.

Iodine production in September hit target, while a preliminary permit has been awarded for its water supply operation in Montana.

Production last month rose 18.6% to 28 metric tonnes (Mt) of crystallised iodine compared to 23.6 Mt the month previously, the company revealed.

International Mining & Infrastructure Corporation (LON:IMIC) said an updated resource  estimate for the flagship Nkout iron ore project in Cameroon gives it further confidence they have a world-class asset on their hands.

Elsewhere, Galantas Gold (LON:GAL) shares advanced over 50% with the release of positive exploration results from the fringes of the Omagh gold mine, in Northern Ireland.

High grade gold has been measured in samples taken from an area of interest near the southern boundary of the site, the company revealed.

Kefi Minerals (LON:KEFI) confirmed the ore reserve for the Tulu Kapi project in Ethiopia was independently verified at a million ounces.

It follows a number of recent project milestones.

Beowulf Mining (LON:BEM) has reported some of the best indications of metal yet from drilling at the southern portion of its Kallak iron ore project in Sweden. “The latest assays have returned the highest grades over the longest intersections seen since Beowulf started exploration on the Kallak ore body," it said.

European Lithium, which is developing a project in Austria, revealed plans to raise £5mln and float on AIM.

The Wolfsberg Project in Austria is strategically well positioned in the middle of Europe to supply lithium and its by-products, the company said.

Sticking with Alpine opportunities - Horizon Discovery (LON:HZD) has negotiated access to a new high-throughput, affordable cell line engineering service thanks to a deal with Austria's Haplogen Genomics.

Chief executive Darrin Disley said the agreement means Horizon can now offer the majority of academic research labs access to its custom gene-editing services at low cost.

The AIM-listed life sciences group will also market Haplogen’s rapidly growing collection of over 700 human knockout cell lines and more than 9,000 thousand gene trap mutants to over 70,000 active academic research labs worldwide.

Galasys (LON:GLS), the provider of ticketing systems and solutions to the theme park industry in Asia, has won two new contracts worth around £217,000.

These contracts have been awarded by the Enchanted Kingdom in Laguna, the Philippines’ only world-class theme park, and the OCT group for its Window of the World theme park in Shenzhen, one of the oldest iconic theme parks in China.

The contract with the Enchanted Kingdom represents the first for the group in the Philippines. Galasys will provide its GSER and GPOS point-of-sales front-end to the Enchanted Kingdom.

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...

11 hours, 31 minutes ago