OIL EXPLORER Petroneft’s shares rose by more than 8 per cent yesterday after the company announced that it discovered a new oil deposit at its licence in Russia.

The announcement comes less than three weeks after the Irish company said that it raised more than €31 million to fund new drilling and acquisitions.

Petroneft said that it had discovered oil after drilling in its number one well in the Arbuzovskaya prospect in Russia, which is close to the existing Lineynoye oil field, and is covered by licence 61.

There are four other oil fields in this licence area.

The news prompted a surge of interest in its shares. By 4.30pm yesterday, Petroneft was trading at 59.5 pence sterling, an increase of 8.2 per cent on its opening quote.

During tests, oil flowed from the discovery at a rate of 289 barrells per day.

The company will now drill the well to about 2,900m and said that this work should be completed by the end of the month.

The Dublin and London-listed company plans to drill five exploration wells between now and the end of 2011.

Its chief executive, Dennis Francis, said that Petroneft was delighted to begin its exploration campaign with the discovery of a fifth oil field in licence number 61.

“This is an especially important discovery, because of the good flow rate it confirms the wider prospectivity of a number of additional structures east of the existing producing Lineynoye oil field which can be easily tied in to the central processing facilities and pipeline at Lineynoye,” he said.

Petroneft is on target to reach production of 4,000 barrels of oil a day by December, and plans to treble this to 12,000 a day from its existing assets by the end of 2012.

It intends using the cash raised last month to fund more exploration drilling and to buy interests in new licence areas.

The company is focusing its exploration efforts on Russia.