LONDON (Alliance News) - Latin America-focused Echo Energy PLC on Friday said it has made a gas discovery on the first well in a four-well drilling programme in Argentina.
Shares in Echo Energy were up 13% Friday at 15.03 pence each.
Echo has been drilling at the ELM-1004 well on its Fraccion C project onshore Argentina. It drilled to 1,760 metres, and found over 40 metres of gas with peak amounts of over 195,000 parts-per-million and a full distribution of various hydrocarbons.
The company said this was an encouraging result, and it is now running in a production casing string as it awaits the arrival of the completion rig, which is scheduled for June. After that, it will test the well to asses deliverability.
Once that is done, Echo will move the rig onto the second well in the programme, Los Alamos x-1.
Chief Executive Fiona MacAulay said: "We are very excited to have confirmed the presence of a substantial gas column in this first well of our four well exploration programme and look forward to the arrival of the completion rig and subsequent testing in June.
"Meanwhile our attention turns to ELA-1 where we expect to spud the well within the next few days."
Echo Energy (ECHO)