The Melbourne-based company, which has 50.1% of oil and mineral rights in the semi-autonomous Somali state, yesterday said it had obtained documentation on Conoco’s exploration in Puntland up to June 1990.

The joint venture partners at the time consisted of Conoco, Phillips (then a separate company) and Japan-based Nikko Petroleum.

Range said the data included monthly reports, minutes of the JV technical committee and well summaries for Nogal-1 and Kalia-1, the last wells to be drilled by Conoco before their evacuation from the troubled country in 1990.

Range said the minutes on the Nogal Basin demonstrated abundant oil shows, thick, high-porosity reservoirs, a number of large structures and an excellent regional seal.

It said log analysis of Nogal-1 by Conoco during drilling indicated three zones in the Gumburo Formation with potential for commercially producible oil.

Range said although the well did not reach the primary reservoir target, it should be classified as an oil discovery.

“Range considers the highly positive information from the Conoco documentation to be very encouraging and the company believes it provides further evidence of the large potential for hydrocarbons in the Nogal and Darin basins,” managing director Michael Povey said.

But he said the company did not have the complete data sets on these wells or for the whole exploration effort in the Nogal Valley Basin or Darin Basins.

“These encouraging results require follow up with modern seismic and exploration wells to confirm this potential,” Povey said.

Nogal-1 was spudded in November 1989 and reached total depth of 3272m in April 1990 before Conoco drilled Kalis-1. The third well in the program, Sinujif-1, had site preparations and roadworks completed when drilling was abandoned in 1991.

Somalia has not seen any oil and gas exploration since civil war broke out in the country in the late 1980s. Range has previously said it believed the area had all the pre-requisites to become a major oil-producing province.