Volga Gas pleased with Yuzhny Uzenskaya progress

Oil and gas firm Volga Gas saw its shares shoot higher Tuesday after an update on supra-salt drilling and development activities in its Karpenskiy Licence Area.The company said the Yu-Uz#8 development well on the Yuzhno-Uzenskaya field has been drilled and has tested productive oil pay while the Yu-Uz#9 development well has been completed and has started producing.The Uz#6 well has been successfully sidetracked and is expected to start production soon, completing a successful recovery project on a well that was initially announced as unsuccessful.'We are delighted with our recent successful drilling activities on Yuzhny Uzenskaya where we will have a total of six wells in production,' said Volga's chief executive, Mikhail Ivanov. 'We look forward to sustaining production from the Uzenskaya field area at significantly higher levels for the remainder of 2009 and to investigating further opportunities to expand our supra-salt development activity in the Karpenskiy Licence Area,' Ivanov added.