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Friday's movers, including RBS, Falcon Oil & Gas, Premier African Minerals and Rose Petroleum and SolGold

Published: 03:44 02 May 2014 EDT

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Britain's blue chips got off to a weak start as investors show caution ahead of the US jobs number.

RBS (LON:RBS) was under scrutiny, along with shares rising in the 81% state owned bank, as it reported a rare profit in its first quarter.

There were also some notable risers in the small caps. A standout was Falcon Oil & Gas (LON:FOG), which shot up over 27% as investors welcomed news it had agreed a farm-out deal for its Beetaloo unconventional acreage in Australia with a headline value of $200mln.

Local operator Origin Energy and South African gas-to-liquids specialist Sasol are taking a 70% stake in the licences, which have a prospective resource potential of 162 trillion cubic feet of gas and 21bn barrels of oil.

In return, Falcon will receive A$20mln in cash and will be carried on a comprehensive, five-year exploration programme. This includes three vertical exploration wells, one fracked vertical exploration well and five fracked horizontal wells.

The first five wells are estimated to cost of A$64mln and are expected to be completed in the first three years, while Falcon will carried on the next four up to a cost of A$101mln.

Premier African Minerals (LON:PREM) went over 15% higher, after rising yesterday too, as it agreed a bridging loan to fund its option over 30% of the Danakil potash project in Ethiopia, which could also see it sold on.

In March, Premier agreed an option to buy Canada-listed AgriMinco’s 30% interest in Danakil, which is held in a subsidiary called Madalore.

Circum Minerals is providing the US$2.5mln bridging loan, which is interest free and runs until the end of 2014. 

Circum owns the remaining 70% of Danakil and is also being granted an option to buy Mandalore from Premier at a price equivalent to the bridging loan in cash or shares.

Rose Petroleum's (LON:ROSE) plans for newly acquired acreage in Utah's Paradox basin have been boosted by a positive update from the operator of a neighbouring project.

Shares in Rose were also boosted - to the tune of nearly 7%.

New York listed MDU Resources, as part of a broader update, yesterday told investors that that the Paradox Basin is the company's fastest growing oil producing area, with output up 121% in the first three months of 2014.

MDU also said that one of its wells is exceeding expectations, flowing more than 1,000 barrels of oil per day. 

SolGold (LON:SOLG) boss Alan Martin has said he believes the Cascabel copper-gold project in northern Ecudor has the potential to be a deposit running to “billions of tonnes”.

His comments accompanied a progress report in which the group revealed it had carried out a second round of magnetic modelling and chosen the location for its seventh exploration hole.

It said the expansion, deepening and further refinement to magnetic modelling confirmed multiple, large targets northwest, west and southeast of the current drilling at Alpala. Shares, however, pulled back over 10%.

In the big caps, InterContinental Hotels (LON: IHG.) was the second biggest riser on Footsie, after it posted a strong first quarter and said it would return £444.2mln to shareholders.

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