Savannah Petroleum gears up for maiden drilling programme

AIM-quoted oil and gas company Savannah Petroleum has completed construction of the first well pad on the R3 portion of its Agadem Basin operations in south-east Niger, taking the company one step closer to kicking off its maiden drill programme in the West African nation.

Construction of the Bushiya well pad was completed last month, with Savannah moving more than 100 workers to the site, including a rig crew and supervisors in order to prepare the location for spudding.

In preparation for the rest of the drilling campaign, well pad construction at Savannah's second well, Amdigh, was over 20% complete, with civil work operations at the site expected to be complete by the end of March.

Andrew Knott, chief executive of Savannah Petroleum, said, "We are delighted to be on the cusp of commencing our maiden drilling operations in Niger, which represents the culmination of thousands of man-hours of technical and operational work. The drilling campaign has the potential to be transformational for both Savannah and the local communities in which we are operating."

Savannah assessed a total mean unrisked recoverable resource of 110m barrels of oil across the three targets.

As of 0840 GMT, shares had picked up 2.67% to 29.98p.