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Aminex, the listed Irish oil and gas explorer with operations in Africa,has reported a pretax loss of $4.64 million for the first six months of the year, compared with a loss of $1.6 million, for the same period in 2007.

 The company said this morning that revenues increased 54 percent to $4.5 million during the first half of the year on the back of higher gas and oil prices.

The loss on operating activities before other costs at $1.37 million shows a 10 per cent improvement over last year, Aminex said.

The group's disposal of its interest in the share capital of Amicoh Resources which holds the Manja exploration licence in Madagascar gave rise to a non-cash charge of $3.38 million.

Following the recent fall in oil and gas prices, Aminex said it didn't expect similar revenues to be achieved during the second half of the year. However, it stated that any shortfall of revenues on account of lower commodity prices would be offset by incremental production.