WTI $49.01 -9c, Brent $49.71 +2c, Diff -70c, NG $2.38 +9c

Oil price

This morning sees the start of the 169th Opec meeting in Vienna and yesterday saw the preliminary skirmishes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Predictably both sides were holding their corner by playing the production card, I can eke out more than you can sort of stuff. With this attitude, and bearing mind that both sides treated the Doha meeting with similar disrespect the chances of anything other than the maintenance of the status quo is unlikely. At $50 both sides are quietly happy that the worst appears over whilst not wanting to encourage producers who can fire up production again to do so, a perfect scenario for doing nothing…

Sound Energy

Sound has announced this morning the preliminary results of their Tendrara well onshore Morocco which are very encouraging. They have reached TD of 2,665m and identified the TAGI reservoir starting at a depth of 2,535m, some 12m higher than expected. More importantly they have found ‘significant gas shows’ and total gross net pay of 89m which has a full set of logs that will now be processed. Testing will now proceed but the rig is already being de-mobilised and will move from the TE6 location to nearby TE7 and prepare for the second well in the campaign. Without getting too excited prior to testing the vibes seem pretty good and the company must feel vindicated in their strategy in Morocco especially as they have identified a number of other locations to drill in-country.

Gulf Keystone Petroleum

After the recent announcements from others in the area GKP announce today that they too have received further payments, in their case $13m and expect the rest soon.

And finally…

Muzza eventually got on court and after losing the first set won remarkably easily setting up a semi-final with big Stan.

England play their last friendly before the Euros tonight with a send-off game at Wembley against Portugal.