The Gatwick airport oil discovery group's shares jump on 'upgraded' oil find
UK Oil & Gas Investments, the oil exploration group, just saw its shares shoot up by nearly 7% in the market open today after it revealed that it has "upgraded" its oil find in the south of England.
UKOG said in a regulatory statement that the Stock Tank Oil Initially In Place (STOIIP) volumes estimated for the overall Upper Portland Sandstone conventional reservoir in the Horse Hill and Collendean Farm structure, near Gatwick Airport, was upgraded by an independent company Xodus Group.
This led to surge in the stock price:
However, the rise was just the equivalent to 0.18p, as shares are worth just 2.7p.
Today's UKOG statement is notably without tangible round numbers as to what the upgrade equates to in barrels of oil. This may be down to the fact that the group has come under fire for not being able to decide on whether it has actually discovered about 100 billion barrels of oil near Gatwick Airport, or not.
In April, the group initially said that there was a ridiculously huge amount of oil underneath the ground in Horse Hill near Gatwick Airport, West Sussex. The confusion began when Stephen Sanderson, CEO of UKOG, told BBC in April that the group potentially uncovered up to 100 billion barrels of oil near Gatwick Airport.
UKOG shares rocketed by 215% on the day the news was announced.
Then a week later UKOG tried to calm everyone down and let them know that it definitely won't recover that amount of oil any time soon. The stock price erased most of its gains it made in the week of the announcement.
Last week, UKOG's chairman David Lenigas said Britain does have this massive glut of oil in the Weald Basin in West Sussex.
But UKOG put out a regulatory statement in April, saying that it actually doesn't quite know how much oil is in the ground.
After Lenigas' statement, UKOG again released another statement saying that it cannot confirm the amount of oil Lenigas mentioned in the interview because UKOG has not undertaken enough exploration work to say for sure.