With estimated oil reserves of 115 billion barrels there is a great deal of interest in drilling for black gold in Iraq, the world’s third-most-oil-rich country after Saudi Arabia and Iran.

So it was with great relish that Gulf Keystone Petroleum, with Kalegran, its partner, said that it had contracted Weatherford Drilling International to supply a drilling rig for a minimum two-well programme in the Kurdistan region. The agreement also has the option to drill another three wells.

The company aims to drill the first well at its Shaikan Block, which it estimates has up to two billion barrels of oil, in early 2009. Todd Kozel, Gulf Keystone’s chairman and chief executive, said that the contract was a clear benefit of the company’s recent fund-raising and showed the rapid progress that it was making in the region. Shares in the oil and gas exploration and production company, which also has assets in Algeria, fell ¾p to 26¾p.

Synchronica, the mobile e-mail synchronisation group, fell ¼p to 4¼p after it said that it planned to buy Axis-Mobile, a rival, in an all-share deal. The company will raise £5.1 million via two institutional placings at 3p a share to fund the deal, which it said would give it a leading position in mass-market mobile e-mail technology and would take it into new markets in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Plexus Holdings soared more than 17 per cent, or 11p, to 75p after the oil and gas equipment and services group signed a £130,000 contract with SPD, a project management group, for the use of its wellhead system on an appraisal well in the North Sea.

Oxford Biomedica rose ¾p to 11p after Cubana Investments raised its stake in the group, which last week rejected a 35p-per-share approach from the United States-based Gene-Thera, to more than 7 per cent.

Explore Markets

• United States

• Europe

• Japan

• China

• Russia

• The Gulf

• India

• Africa

Times Recommends

• Lloyds TSB wins vote for HBOS merger
• Bank of England discussed 2% rate cut
• Woolworths dives as it confirms takeover talks