Amerisur Resources

Drilling should start in February at acquisitive Amerisur Resources' Pantanillo project in Colombia's Putumayo Basin, with a 90m barrel median estimated resource.

Chaired by serial entrepreneur Giles Clarke, who founded Majestic Wine, Pet City and Safestore and now also chairs the England and Wales Cricket Board, the AIM-quoted company cites an 'in-ground' value of $39 (£24.5) a barrel for the oil there, close to major deposits over the border in Ecuador, and estimates operating costs of $12 a barrel, with an accessible pipeline infrastructure, for potential gross profits of more than £$80 a barrel.

Steered by locally entrenched chief executive 'Don John' Wardle, Amerisur (AMER), which more than doubled interim pre-tax profits to $2m on its producing Colombian assets, has set itself a production target of 5,000 barrels of oil a day by November next year, which Clarke describes as an 'under-estimate'. With $17m cash and money coming in from current production, the company is no less enthusiastic about its San Pedro prospect in Paraguay, an under-explored country which Clarke says is nowadays as keen as Colombia to have its natural resources developed.

Clarke points to a currrent estimate of more than 700m barrels for San Pedro, based on information gathered for only 15% of the licence area, and the presence of major oil groups nearby, including Spain's Repsol. He says Amerisur expects to obtain seismic information on the project next year and to start drilling in 2013.

Analysts see the company, which Clarke indicates is also considering potential corporate takeovers, making nearly £8m pre-tax this year, with more than £55m on the cards for 2012. With the shares at 15.5p, against a year's high of 29p and a low of 9.5p, that would knock the prospective price/earnings ratio from 50 to less than four.

They are worth a punt.