courtesy DNO

Shares in U.K.-based Heritage Oil skyrocketed for a second day after the company’s announcement that its Northern Iraqi oil discovery had uncovered up to 4.2 billion barrels.

Shares traded 7.6 percent higher on Thursday despite a meteoric rise on Wednesday when test results at the Miran-1 were made public. Flow rates of 15,000 barrels per day per well were said to be achievable.

A low-cost field development is being prepared, with low sulphur and no water in the wellstream to complicate things. Still, test equipment better that which was sorely tried at Miran will be needed, and some two months will be needed to get it to Iraq.

Heritage holds a 75 percent interest in the Miran Licence, with Genel Energy International holding the rest.

“Excellent quality” seismic the summer of 2008 bodes well for both Miran’s large structures.

As Heritage announced the find, Saudi Arabia’s announcements that another four million barrels of production capacity was being prepared didn’t stop the price of oil reaching a 2009 high late Wednesday. By Thursday oil’s new ’09 high was 57.62, up 2.27 percent.

Offshore Congo hub Total Wednesday announced that in the Moho Nord Marine No. 4 well 75-kilometres offshore Congo test-flowed 8,100 barrels from a total depth of 4,239 metres, from which a163-metre oil column of high quality was found.

With Moho Nord wells Nos. 1, 2 and 3 also positive, the latest well bodes suggests “the emergence of a development pole” in the northern part of the Moho-Bilondo license.

Chevron (32 percent) and Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (15 percent) are partners in the permit.