Genel Energy PLC (GENL.LN), an Anglo-Turkish oil company set up by ex-BP chief Tony Hayward and financier Nat Rothschild, Wednesday said it hopes that a large oil discovery at Chia Surkh in the Kurdistan region of Iraq could be a sign of things to come, as it has another five exploration wells planned for the region in 2013.

"It's a big result, stonking flow rate and it's the first of five exploration wells we're going to be drilling in Kurdistan ," Mr Hayward told Dow Jones Newswires in a telephone interview.

Due to regions of high pressure the well wasn't easy to drill, he noted, saying it took about five months and cost about $25 million.

The well was drilled to 1,696 meters and flowed up to 11,950 barrels of light crude oil a day and 15 million cubic feet of gas. The company has already started drilling an appraisal well to quantify the result. According to pre-drill estimates, the field could hold about 300 million barrels of oil.

"From the moment we drilled into the reservoir, it was clear that we had made the discovery, so we moved ahead to be able to do an earlier first appraisal well with a second rig," he said.

Genel has also identified two more "significant" prospects on the 984 square kilometer license bordering Iran and is working on plans to drill them.

"We're figuring out the timing of those as we speak, but probably one before the end of the year and another in the course of next year I would guess," said Mr. Hayward, who left BP PLC (BP) in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.

Though he doesn't currently know what kind of production rates to expect, the CEO said Genel plans to start production from the discovery early next year as part of a staggered development, in line with the way it is developing another of its Kurdistan oil fields, Taq Taq.

"It is the great advantage of this sort of discovery that you can bring them onto production very quickly in a sort of phased way and until we get some pipeline in we'll be trucking, like we have at Taq Taq," he said.

Mr. Hayward noted that he is confident of getting to a point within 18 months where Chia Surkh has enough well capacity to have a pipeline.

The company also plans to drill another three exploration wells on its other Kurdistan assets, including a deep well on Tawke, a deep well on Taq Taq and a deep well on Miran, the CEO said.

"There's a theme in the second half [of 2013] which is about testing deep reservoirs, beneath already proven oil and gas fields, which of course is absolutely typical for the Middle East. You very often find stacked hydrocarbon [oil and gas] reservoirs and that concept really hasn't been pursued yet in Kurdistan, but this year's going to be the first year and I think we're pretty optimistic about what we're going to find," Mr. Hayward said.

Outside the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan , Genel is planning to drill an exploration well in Somaliland , a self-declared sovereign state internationally recognized as an autonomous region of Somalia -- making it the first company to drill a well in Somaliland .

"We've got big seismic plans ongoing in Somaliland, that'll take through this year into the first quarter of next year, then we plan to spud [start drilling] the first exploration well in the second quarter of next year," Mr. Hayward said.

East Africa is developing into a major oil and gas hub, but Somalia has largely been left behind due to conflicts and ongoing political tensions.

Mr. Hayward said the company has had no security concerns operating in the region so far and has received "immensely strong support from the government of Somaliland."

"It functions as a fully fledged independent democratic state and like I say, thus far we've had no security issues at all. That's not to say we're not very focused on security for obvious reasons, it's a region in North Africa where there's clearly the risk of a serious security incident," he added.

At 1030 GMT, Genel shares were up 50.0 pence, or 6.3% at 849.0 pence, in a slightly higher FTSE 250 index--up 0.8%.

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