Madagascar Oil Limited announced earnings results for the full year ended December 31, 2012. For the year, the company reported net loss of $13.6 million against $13.2 million in 2011. Capital expenditure amounted to $64.5 million against $16.8 million a year ago.

The company announced that the Tsimiroro heavy oil field covers approximately 1,600 km of the 6,670 km area of Block 3104. The best estimate contingent original oil in place is approximately 1.7 billion barrels, with further significant prospective oil in place in adjacent untested fault blocks. As the oil is heavy (14° API gravity) and has a high viscosity in the shallow sandstone reservoir, cold pumping only achieves flow rates of less than five barrels per day, which would not be a commercial proposition. For this reason, the Company has engineered and constructed a Steam Flood Pilot project that is designed to evaluate the potential production rates and recovery factor that could be achieved through thermal stimulation of the oil in situ. In analogous fields, recovery factors of 50% or more have been achieved through steam flooding. If this level of recovery can be demonstrated at Tsimiroro, commercial oil production from the field will become a realistic prospect. During 2012 the company drilled 28 wells in the Tsimiroro field: 16 production wells, nine steam injection wells and three observation wells. In addition several water wells and water disposal wells were drilled. As previously noted, the construction phase has taken much longer than planned but, as of April 2013, the steam generators had been commissioned and steam injection into the first wells had commenced. It is expected that two or three CSS cycles will be required, with each cycle taking several weeks. This process creates some voidage in the reservoir that will allow continuous steam injection to be initiated more effectively. It also creates a heated area around each production well that reduces the oil viscosity and allows it to flow through the reservoir to the well more easily. The second phase of the Steam Flood Pilot involves steam flooding of the first two patterns. During this phase, steam is injected into the injection well at the centre of each pattern and the surrounding production wells are pumped to produce oil and water. The results of the Tsimiroro delineation wells drilled in 2011 and 2012, the 10,000 km2 AGG survey carried out in 2011 and the seismic data available over the field are now being integrated into a new comprehensive model of the field area. Once this work has been completed, an updated Tsimiroro oil in-place estimate will be prepared. The Bemolanga Block covers an area of approximately 5,463 km2 and is operated by Total E&P, which holds a 60% working interest. The block contains an extensive tar sand deposit that could be surface mined. This oil yield is approximately half of that encountered with typical Canadian oil sands. Laboratory studies were conducted into the extraction of the bitumen from the rock and an economic model was built. Despite the size of the deposit in the area studied, estimated at 1.2 billion barrels of mineable bitumen, the study confirmed that, at a base oil price range of $60-$100/bbl Brent Blend, the cost of mining the ore, crushing the rock, extracting the bitumen, upgrading, blending and shipping the heavy oil product would not support a commercial mining project. The Exploration Blocks cover a total area of 17,400 km2 in the Morondava Basin and lie immediately to the south of the Tsimiroro Block. Earlier operators discovered both gas and light oil in the Exploration Blocks, but the number of wells drilled to date on modern data is very low and Madagascar is still a frontier area. However, all the elements of a working petroleum system are present and it is entirely possible that commercial volumes of light oil and gas are waiting to be discovered in the Exploration Blocks.