Last checked at 
LONDON (Alliance News) - Tower Resources PLC on Tuesday reported a significant increase to its annual loss on almost USD3 million in impairment charges.
Tower shares were trading down 14% at 0.75 pence each.
For 2018, the Africa-focused oil & gas company posted a pretax loss of USD3.8 million compared to a USD1.6 million loss a year ago.
This was mainly due to USD2.8 million in impairment of exploration and evaluation assets related to licences in Zambia, which was not reported a year prior.
Other administrative expenses were reduced to USD1.0 million from USD1.6 million.
As it is currently at the exploration stage, Tower Resources did not generate any revenue in either 2018 or 2017.
"During 2018 we made considerable progress towards our goals, and the general state of our industry improved as well, despite a weakening in market sentiment during the last couple of months of the year," Chair & Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Asher said.
he added: "The challenge for the industry to maintain or increase production following the under-investment of the past few years, coupled with continuing uncertainty about some of the more politically sensitive sources of supply, have sustained oil price increases during 2018 and into the first few months of 2019, despite continuing worries about global slowdown and trade wars.
"Encouragingly, a number of recent discoveries have also reminded the industry of the value of exploration, which still forms a significant part of our portfolio, and Total's discovery at Brulpadda in South Africa, after the year-end, is especially relevant to our own adjoining license."
