Offshore staff

(Peru)- Gold Oil and Plectrum Petroleum Plc will form a joint venture in Block Z34, located in the Talara basin offshore Peru.

A Gold Oil press release states that the Talara basin has to date produced in excess of 1.7 Bbbl of oil and 340 bcm of gas.

While the 3,713-km block (reportedly equivalent to 14 North Sea Blocks) sits adjacent to existing producing concessions in water depths of 100-3,000 m, it has a sparse existing data set of just 500 km of 2D seismic and no wells.

The two companies have jointly given notice to the Peruvian authorities to convert Gold's existing Promotion Agreement into a 30 year Exploration & Exploitation Contract.

Under the terms of the joint venture, Gold will have a 50% carried interest through the initial seismic phase of the work program.

The initial work program will be to acquire a conventional modern seismic grid and enhance these data with MMT and Electro Magnetic studies.

Final completion of the transaction is subject to the qualification of both companies as approved contractors and the negotiation with and approval of the Exploration Contract terms by the Peruvian authorities.

Gary Moore, Gold's CEO, commented on the JV:

"We have been looking for a partner who could bring some state of the art expertise to the table and we believe Plectrum fits the bill perfectly and look forward to working with them. For a small company such as Gold we can either buy in the expertise in a very sparse market or bring in a partner who already processes such skills and can share the workload. We chose the latter. "

5/9/2006