British oil and gas exploration and production company Dana Petroleum said the Bamboo well off the coast of Egypt did not find oil, sending its shares down, although it made two oil discoveries onshore Egypt. The FTSE 250 company said the Bamboo well in the Nile Delta, operated by GDF Suez and seen by analysts as a key well in the company's exploration program, found sands which were water bearing and was temporarily abandoned. Dana's shares fell 5 percent to 1,202 pence at 0822 GMT, making it one of the top-losers in Britain's mid-cap index. Dana, which also has oil and gas assets in the North Sea and Morocco, also said two of its wells onshore Egypt made oil discoveries. The Lorcan-1x well encountered good quality oil bearing sands and flowed at a rate of up to 4,714 barrels a day while the Fayoum-2x well also found oil and should be capable of flowing at rates of around 600 barrels of oil per day. "The Lorcan oil discovery is an excellent result which has exceeded Dana's expectations," said chief executive Tom Cross. He added that the company would seek to bring the oil into production as soon as possible and as such had started talks with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation. Oriel Securities analyst Brendan Wilders said that Lorcan looked better than pre-drill expectations but the abandonment of Bamboo had overshadowed the Lorcan discovery. "The focus was clearly on the Bamboo well, which was a particularly high impact well, so there's an element of disappointment about that," he said. Dana also said its Monkwell well in the UK Southern North Sea made a gas discovery which was too small to be economic.
