OREANDA-NEWS. Tower Resources plc (the "Company" or "Tower" (TRP.L, TRP LN)), the AIM-listed Africa-focussed oil and gas exploration company, is pleased to announce that it has received formal notification from Lion Petroleum Inc. ("Lion"), the wholly-owned Kenya-based subsidiary of Taipan Resources Inc. ("Taipan")(TSX-V:TPN), and Operator of Block-2B (Tower 15%, Premier Oil 55% and Taipan 30% working interests), that the GW-190 rig has spudded the Badada-1 well, onshore Kenya, at 14:00 GMT on 7 January 2015.

Tower's estimate of the gross unrisked prospective resources to be tested by Badada-1 ranges from 16mmboe (P90) to 402mmboe (P10) with a Pmean of 169mmboe. This compares to the Operator's gross mean unrisked recoverable resources estimate of 251 mmboe (Source: Sproule International Limited, February 2014). The well is planned to be drilled to a total depth of between 3,000 and 4,000 metres to test Tertiary age reservoirs analogous to those in the Lokichar basin where Tullow and Africa Oil have made discoveries with best estimate unrisked gross (2C) contingent resources totaling 616mmbbls (Africa Oil Corp. Corporate Presentation dated September 2014). The Operator expects drilling to take up to 70 days to complete.

During drilling Tower intends to provide the market with operational updates approximately every two weeks. The Company will also provide a comprehensive update once operations on the Badada-1 well have been fully completed and analysed.

Graeme Thomson, CEO, commented "The spudding of the Badada-1 well marks an important milestone in this frontier exploration basin. Badada-1 is a potential play opener, which if successful, will de-risk other prospects and leads in Block-2B and generate considerable upside from a follow-on exploration programme in 2016/17ЃЌ.