Xcite Energy, the owner of the North Sea heavy oil Bentley field, has today announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with China Oilfield Services Limited (COSL), which sets out the principles for the provision of a new-build Keppel FELS N Class Plus, harsh environment jack-up drilling rig…

Falklands oil and gas explorer Rockhopper Exploration (RKH) has announced an unexpected update to its Sea Lion development in the North Falklands basin together with Premier Oil.

It was amazing to be watching Quindell this morning and seeing it drop as low as 62p. In mid-October the shares were trading at around 160p after announcing a contract win with Aviva Canada and over 130p last week on the initial announcement that directors were purchasing shares.

Online video ads specialist Blinkx like Quindell has been embroiled in a battle with short sellers and in the case of Blinkx its problems started with a negative report from Associate Professor Ben Edelman at Harvard University who alleged that the company was inflating its video click rates.

Quindell (QPP) the Software, Consulting and Technology outsourcer issued another RNS this morning connected with more detail on the directors recent deal with Equities First Holdings (EFH) which caused the shares to drop as low as 88p, a 25% fall. They are now trading at 103p with some huge volatility.

News today that the United States economy added 214,000 jobs last month which was below expectations of 240,000-250,000 with the unemployment rate dropping 0.1% to 5.8%.

With the price of gold dropping heavily in recent weeks and currently trading at $1147, investors in sub-Saharan African focused and LSE/Nasdaq gold miner Randgold Resources Limited were relieved to see the company’s third quarter results and drove the shares up 8% on the news to £40.70.

After a prolonged period of steep share price falls for Quindell, the telematics and legal services group, it was interesting to see an announcement this afternoon that the directors of the company were buying the shares heavily sending the price up 6% or so to 133p.

Earlier today, Zambian focused tailings miner, Berkeley Mineral Resources (BMR) had its shares suspended, “At the request of the company trading on AIM for the under-mentioned securities has been temporarily suspended from 04/11/2014 12:00pm, pending clarification of the company’s financial position.”

Brent Crude is currently down over a dollar a barrel to $83.5 a barrel with Nymex WTI Crude down to $78 a barrel as Saudi Arabia announced it was increasing the discount to USA refiners.