Rose Petroleum shares crash 14% but company 'encouraged' by project interest

Rose Petroleum’s share prices fell over 10% on Tuesday as the company updated shareholders on its attempts to advance the competitive partnering process for its Paradox Basin, Utah asset.

The company holds a 75% working interest in the 90,000 net acre oil and gas asset and, while it commented that it is "encouraged by strong interest" shown in the project by prospective partners, a collaboration deal has yet to be confirmed.

The Paradox project was exhibited at the NAPE summit in early February and the company is now in the process of creating a virtual data room for the project, with a projected completion date of early April 2018.

Matthew Idiens, chief executive of Rose Petroleum, said: "The NAPE summit was a great success in terms of gauging interest and as the geological and engineering work progresses, due to the quality of the data acquired and the experience of the technical team involved, we believe we have significantly de-risked the project so that we are now confident of achieving operational success and driving the project forward."

According to Rose Petroleum’s interpretation of 3D seismic data from the site there are 50 potential well sites which have been ranked according to their structural habitat, the probability of the presence of more than one fracture orientation and their proximity to basement faulting.

The technical hypothesis deployed in this ranking system is supported by work carried out at the Cane Creek reservoir site.

"The Company continues to make excellent progress in pursuit of its key objective of spudding its first Paradox well in 2018. The seismic acquisition was completed within time and under budget, the initial well location has been selected, and the permitting process is underway. Importantly, we have been very encouraged by the interest shown in the project to date," said Idiens.

As of 1429 GMT, Rose Petroleum’s shares were down 14.07% at 2.58p.