Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. reported that it has reached its target depth of approximately 19,357 feet (5,900 meters) in drilling its Ma'anit-Joseph #3 well into the Permian geologic layer in Northern Israel. The Company is now preparing for open-hole logging operations, planned to commence this week.
Zion also announced that its shares of Common Stock were added to the preliminary list of both the Russell Global Index and the U.S. broad-market Russell 3000(R) on June 10, 2011. Russell Investments will publish the final inclusion lists of its indexes on June 27, 2011.
Zion's inclusion is part of the Russell's regular reconstitution of its U.S. equity indices each year. Russell indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for both passive and active investment strategies. An industry-leading US $3.9 trillion in institutional assets currently are benchmarked to them. Zion's common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol "ZN".
Zion Oil & Gas, a Delaware corporation, explores for oil and gas in Israel in areas located onshore between Haifa and Tel Aviv. It currently holds two petroleum exploration licenses, the Joseph License (on approximately 83,000 acres), between Netanya, in the south, and Haifa, in the north and the Jordan Valley License (on approximately 56,000 acres), just south of the Sea of Galilee. The Asher-Menashe License (on approximately 79,000 acres), which Zion has held continuously since June 2007, expired on June 9, 2011 (its scheduled expiration date), however, prior to that date, Zion submitted an extension application to Israel's Petroleum Commissioner.
