PMI CEO Glenn McNamara

The junior oil company drilling for a big prize in Albania and partnered with energy super major Royal Dutch Shell, Petromanas Energy, put out a news release this morning claiming encouraging logging-while-drilling results at its Molisht-1 well in Southern Albania.

The well is located on blocks 2-3, in which Petromanas holds a 25-per-cent working interest and is the operator, with Shell holding the remaining 75-per-cent interest.

As previously announced, PMI encountered a carbonate structure at a depth of roughly 4,174 meters. The well penetrated around 250 meters of carbonate, called the Eocene carbonate, before encountering a lower flysch shale zone (the company previously put 900 meters of unstable flysch rock behind pipe prior to drilling ahead).

Petromanas ran intermediate wire-line logs in the upper Eocene carbonate, with the borehole image analysis revealing sections within the Eocene containing natural fractures, which support the presence of oil.

The company said the prospective carbonate reservoirs in Albania are the Eocene, Paleocene and Cretaceous, with the Cretaceous being the primary target.

The Molisht-1 well is currently drilling ahead at a depth of approximately 4,650 metres and is expected to be drilled to an estimated total depth of 6,000 meters, 500 meters deeper than originally announced, with additional data acquisition and testing planned to follow reaching total depth (TD). The company did not say whether the deepening of the well would affect timelines for the company, with TD currently expected for sometime in Q3 2014.

"The initial LWD interpretation is encouraging at this early stage," said Glenn McNamara, chief executive officer of Petromanas. "Our focus now returns to deepening the well to identify further fracture networks in the underlying carbonates."

During the first 30 minutes of trading on Friday, shares in Petromanas Energy were down 2.6%, last at $0.37, on approximately 1 million shares traded.

News Release: Petromanas provides further update on Molisht-1 drilling

More: Mr. McNamara joined Andrew Bell of BNN Television yesterday

Disclosure: Long Petromanas Energy