Should you play the oil price recovery with these three small-caps?

Amerisur Resources (LSE: AMER), Premier Oil (LON: PMO) and Hurricane Energy (LON:HUR) are three firms that could perform well if the oil price continues to rise. 

Colombian producer

Amerisur Resources mainly operates in the highly prospective Putumayo Basin in Colombia and today the company updated the market on operations in Colombia. The company has drilled an infill well on the Platanillo Field, which has yielded encouraging results. The reservoir will now be subject to a long-term production test and the results of the test will be a great catalyst for the share price. Amerisur are also building a key piece of infrastructure called the OBA pipeline. However the pipeline is very late and the company need it to come on-line as soon as possible to lower production costs. The company said today that the pipeline will be in operation in the coming weeks. 

Management is happy with the operations and CEO John Wardle said: “I am pleased to report the successful drilling of Platanillo-8, after a hiatus of almost 18 months of drilling activities. Operational performance has been outstanding, with important enhancements that we can apply going forward.”

Overall it’s a rosy picture for Amerisur and there are many catalysts for the share price in the coming six months. 

North Sea-focused 

Premier Oil came under the spotlight this year when shares crashed to 19p from their 2015 peak of 180p. The update from Premier today is a strong one but the balance sheet remains a serious worry even though recent production rates have been above 80,000 bopd and full-year guidance is likely to beat expectations. This was due to Premier’s new Solan development coming online and producing 11,000 bopd. It’s also encouraging that opex is $14 per barrel below budget and the integration of E.ON’s North Sea assets is complete.

CEO Tony Durrant stated that Premier has “delivered a robust production performance.” He also added: “At current oil prices, we start to generate free cash flow later this year, which positions us well to manage the balance sheet whilst retaining some optionality for future growth projects.”

Fractured basement pioneer 

Although Hurricane didn’t update the market today, the company has a lot going on at the moment and spudded a well at the Lancaster discovery on 6 July. The well is aiming to better define the resource size at Lancaster as well as collect more data on the reservoir. Hurricane is aiming to develop oil trapped in the basement rocks of the North Sea. Recently the company received a £52m investment from industry player Kerogen Capital and Crystal Amber. To many in the industry this was a seal of approval on Hurricane’s assets and the market took the news very well. 

Hurricane is drilling two wells this summer and if successful, it could boost the share price well above its current 17p. Hurricane has the potential to become a very big company if it can prove up the Lancaster resource base and narrow the range of resource size.