ELAND Oil & Gas saw shares jump more than five per cent after telling investors that it has pumped 150,000 barrels of oil from the Opuama-3 well in Nigeria in just three weeks.
The Aberdeen-based group restarted production at the Opuama field after finalising transportation for the extracted crude, after the prolonged shut-in at Forcados Terminal.
The first shuttle vessel delivered about 39,000 barrels to the export terminal last week and a second vessel has now arrived with 40,000 barrels, while the first vessel is now returning to the terminal with a further 40,000 barrels.
Chief executive George Maxwell said the movement of nearly 120,000 barrels in under two weeks was “an enormous achievement and a huge success for all our stakeholders”.
Eland said it anticipated this cycle being repeated on an ongoing basis, with the relay system proving it has the capacity to handle greater quantities of production as other wells are brought online.
Eland has a 45 per cent stake in the OML 40 licence through the Elcrest joint venture. Located in the Niger Delta, OML 40 contains Opuama and a number of other fields, including Gbetiokun, Polobo, Abiala and Amobe.
Eland said that following a significant upfront investment into the operating costs of the new shipping arrangement, its current cash balance was $5.9 million, down from $11.1m at year end, of which $4.3m is in a reserve account while the company finalises its borrowing base with its lenders.
“The majority of this investment covers the operating expense for the first 40 days of shipping operations,” said the company. “[We] expect cash balances to grow substantially as further export cycles are completed.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here