Bowleven 'excited' over Cameroon

Bowleven, the Edinburgh-based oil and gas explorer focused on West Africa, has made an "exciting start" to its drilling campaign on the Etinde field off the coast of Cameroon.

Releasing a testing update yesterday, the firm said it had successfully completed its planned testing programme on the IE-3 appraisal well.

The well encountered in excess of 134m of hydrocarbon columns, Bowleven added. The rig will now be moved to the Sapele-1 exploration well, which forms part of the Etinde permit. Chief executive Kevin Hart said: "The test results from IE-3 are an exciting start to our multi-well drilling campaign on Etinde. It is highly encouraging to have encountered multiple gas condensate and oil bearing sands."

Bowleven is due to announce its annual results on 9 November.