I’ve been interested in picking up little, speculative oil exploration companies lately — small investments with potential huge upside over many years if their large land holdings and/or large potential reserves amount to anything close to the “best case scenario.” One of those is the company that I wrote about in the Friday File a week ago following Christian DeHaemer’s teaser campaign launch — Africa Oil, and today with the Canadian markets closed and optimism generally reigning I picked up a small chunk of Africa Oil on the pink sheets (AOIFF — main trading is at AOI in Canada) for my personal portfolio.

I still put little faith in their Somalia holdings, which seem almost as speculative now as they did when the same areas were held by Range Resources several years ago (and I laughed at them at the time), but I am impressed with their partnerships and with their Kenya potential. While other small stocks I’ve picked up include the “speculative because they’re still exploring” Petrolia and Reliable Energy, Africa Oil falls into the “even more speculative because of political risk” category that’s also where I put my very unsuccessful speculation (so far) in Manas Petroleum (MNAP) — all depend on exploration and discovery success, but at least Petrolia and Reliable, with properties in Canada and the US, have a fair idea of what the law will be in their territories (absent any new fracking rules) over the next ten years … that’s not necessarily the case in Kenya, Somaliland, Puntland, the Central Asian republics or Mongolia (the first three are AOI, the second two are MNAP).

Now that I own them I’ll be following the story a bit more closely — will let you know if my opinion changes.

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