Small caps round-up: Orogen, Providence, President

Orogen Gold, a Europe-focused miner, has said it has re-established access to its mine sites after a temporary cut-off was caused by extreme weather. The firm admitted that the exceptionally severe winter weather conditions in Serbia have had a slight impact on the timing of completion of the underground work at Gindusa, but said "every effort will be made to minimise this and to commence the drilling programme on schedule early in Q2 [second quarter] 2012". The miner also said that underground mapping and channel sampling is 80% complete at both the Gindusa and Rusman gold mines. The share price fell 16.47% to 0.71p.

Providence Resources, the Irish oil explorer, has successfully completed drilling at the Barryroe appraisal well, where the results were better than expected. Indications of hydrocarbons were seen while drilling, and the results have confirmed the presence of 41 feet of net pay, with no indication of a hydrocarbon water contact. The well will now be flow tested over a period of around 10 days. Providence's shares gained 20.67% to 359.00p. Lansodwne oil & Gas, which has a 20% stake in the asset, rose 23.4% to 43.5p.

President Petroluem, an Argentina-focused oil explorer, has reported that further new oil in place has been identified in an undeveloped reservoir at its Puesto Guardian concession. The new oil in place has been estmated at 16m barrels, comprising 13m barrels from the Puesto Guardian field area and 3m barrels from the Canada Grande field area, and is an addition to the previously announced newly identified oil in place in the Pozo Escondido field, announced on January 19th. Further studies are now being conducted on the rest of the concession. In a statement the firm said: "The ongoing work being conducted represents early stage in house scoping studies, but we know enough now to say that this signals an exciting new area of focus for the work programme." Shares rose 4.35% to 51.00p.

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