2012.06.07 11:55:02 Tullow Oil Discovers Crude Fields In Ivory Coast

-- Tullow finds "good quality, light oil" near Ivory Coast-Ghana border -- Find is latest in post-conflict African nations -- Human Rights Watch has warned of continued instability in Ivory Coast Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN), a U.K.-based exploration company, said Thursday it has discovered oil in Ivory Coast, the latest in a string oil finds in West African nations still emerging from conflict. The company, in a statement, said its exploration wells had struck a "good quality light oil," just across the border from fields in Eastern Ghana that it discovered in 2006. The company said it needs further research to know the size of the deposit. Shares in Tullow were trading up 2.6% in London Thursday, outperforming the wider market. The find comes just one year after the close of Ivory Coast's second civil war in a decade. Unlike neighboring Ghana, a multiparty democracy for the past 20 years, Ivory Coast remains political unstable, awash with weapons and rebels who fought a five-month civil war in 2011 that led to the deaths of 3,000 people after a disputed election. Wednesday, New York City-based Human Rights Watch said that anti-ruling party insurgents who fled Ivory Coast last year have recruited child soldiers in Liberia for cross-border raids meant to eventually topple the government. "For well over a year, the Liberian government has had its head in the sand in responding to the" crisis, said Matt Wells, West Africa researcher for the group. Elsewhere in West Africa, exploration companies are managing the same mix of lucrative oil fields set inside nations still recovering from war. In Liberia, Australia-listed African Petroleum Corps. (AOQ.NW) confirmed in February commercially viable oil throughout a 7,135 square meter area, four times the size of Manhattan. The nation is still easing out from a 14-year civil war in which 250,000 people died and infrastructure was rubbled. Also in February, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) said it had discovered oil in Sierra Leone, which fought its own civil war at the start of the century, leaving 50,000 people dead. The same month, Houston-based Hyperdynamics Corp. (HDY) said it found oil in Guinea, a country struggling to transition from 50 years of dictatorship under successive military regimes that stoked ethnic conflict in the deeply poor nation. Ophir Energy PLC (OPHR.LN), meanwhile, guards hopes that it will find crude in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny nation whose 1999 civil war left behind one land mine for every ten citizens, and where no president has ever finished a term. In April, military leaders kidnapped its prime minister for the second time in two years. --John Biers in New York contributed to this article Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 07, 2012 04:15 ET (08:15 GMT)