30th Sep 2015 14:07
LONDON (Alliance News) - Eland Oil and Gas PLC on Wednesday said its pretax loss narrowed after it generated its maiden revenue in the period. Eland began production from its Nigerian assets and said production will continue to increase in 2015 as it continues developing the oilfields.
The African-focused oil producer reported a USD10.3 million pretax loss in the first six months of 2015, narrowing from the USD12.0 million loss a year earlier, as the company made its first substantial amount of revenue in the period totalling USD9.9 million.
Administrative costs fell to USD5.0 million from USD5.3 million, but that was completely offset by finance costs rising to USD2.6 million from only USD168,000 a year ago.
Revenue in the period was from the sale of 163,095 barrels of oil from the production at the Opuama field in Nigeria, which averaged 2,830 barrels per day, of which 1,273 barrels was net to the company.
Eland is expecting Opuama to achieve an exit rate of around 5,000 barrels of oil per day at the end of 2015, which is down on previous forecasts due to the delay in getting a rig on location to conduct further work on the field to improve production.
Opuama field recorded average production uptime of 81% for the first half of 2015. Production from OML 40 was halted for 14% of the first half of 2015 due to planned maintenance of the Trans Escravos Pipeline network and a further 5% of the period due to industrial action, it said.
Current average Opuama uptime in the second half of 2015 is 90%.
Eland currently is assessing potential well workovers on the OML40 field and further work on the field will begin in October. The company said the work will cause minimal interruption to current production, and the results of the work will also be released before the end of October.
In the fourth quarter, Eland will begin a seven-well drilling campaign on the Opuama field.
Eland shares were down 4.8% to 44.25 pence per share on Wednesday.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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