LONDON (ShareCast) - Amerisur Resources, an oil and gas producer and explorer, has mobilised the work rig D-6 to the Platanillo Field, Colombia. Once the unit is rigged up and tested, the Platanillo-2 well will be re-entered and worked over. The work over programme will evaluate the previously untested formation over a period of 14 days.

Orchid Developments, a Bulgarian focused property developer and investor, has secured four new tenancy agreements at the Grand Mall Varna. The mall now has in excess of 77.2% of its total area leased. The four new tenants are due to start trading by the end of April. Shares fell 2.5% to 9.75p.

Energy and mineral investor Xtract Energy has started drilling at the Luna location in Denmark. The prospect is targeting between 35m and 153m barrels net resources to Xtract. The drilling program is expected to take around one month. The firm has also received the results of a technical study on the various technologies which are being used or developed around the world to extract hydrocarbons from oil shale, which it will use to review its commercial operations. Shares rose 2.22% to 2.30p.

Herencia Resources' first drill results from the initial eleven hole diamond drilling program at the Guamanga Copper-Gold project, in which Herencia holds 51%, appear to have disappointed investors, with the share price dropping 6.59% to 2.12p. The project, which is located to the north of Copiapo in northern Chile, has seen "positive" results which have confirmed and extended the existing zones of near surfact copper and gold.

Merchant House is in the process of transferring its money from Pritchard to alternative agents, and does not believe that the group or any of its clients will suffer economic loss as a result of the FSA notice. The shares lost 4.17% to 0.12p as the company noted that Pritchard Stockbrokers, which holds all client monies of Merchant Capital's Structured Products division (but not other divisions) in segregated client money bank accounts has had its activities limited by the Financal Services Authority (FSA) after falling fol of the FSA's rules.

Grand Bahama Group, in which oil company TXO has a 14.3% stake, has been granted an exclusive licence by the Grand Bahama Port Authority to collect the waste from ships for reprocessing and recycling into useable oil. Shares in TXO gained 16% to 0.72p on the news.

Alexander David Securities has announced that it expects to show a loss for the full year to December 31st, after trading suffered a slowdown during the last five months of the year. The loss will be "significantly" below that the loss for the previous year. Last week the firm agreed to acquire Bridge Hall Stockbrokers for a total of £30,000, a company which is currently in liquidation and no longer trading. Furthermore, Alexander David has place £350,000 worth of preference shares, which will not be admitted to trading on the market, and has issued warrants to the parties who bought preference shares which will give them the right to subscribe for £350,000 of shares in the company at an exercise price of 0.16p per share. The share price fell 18.92% to 0.15p.

Iron Ore producer Strategic Minerals has announced its first contracted revenues from its Cobre Stockpile Project in New Mexico to customers in North America. The firm holds the production rights to 1.5m metric tonnes of shipment ready magnetite at the site, where the average grade of the stockpile is 61.7%.

Corporate finance and stockbroking services firm Merchant House Group saw a slowdown in the launch of funds but increased its assets under management (AUM) during the second half of 2011. AUM at December 31st 2011 were $60m, across four funds, compared to $47m across three funds at the same date the previous year. At February 7th 2012, funds were $62m across five funds. The firm said it remains "cautiously optimistic about the future".

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