(Trinidad Express) Australian oil and gas producer Range Resources Ltd is to take full control of three production licences in active onshore oilfields in Trinidad and Tobago.
Range currently has only a ten per cent stake in the licences, with the remaining 90 per cent held by SOCA Petroleum.
The producing fields contain probable reserves of 4.8 million barrels of oil, with further possible reserves of 2.1 million barrels. The company said there might also be further, undeveloped, prospective resources of 20 million barrels of oil. Range Resources will pay US$52 million upon formal completion of the acquisition as well as 35.8 million Range shares. Furthermore, it may issue two parcels of a further 17.9 million Range shares when production from the SOCA licences reaches 1,250 and 2,500 barrels of oil per day (bopd), respectively.
Current production is around 600 bopd, though a work programme is in the offing to raise this to more than 4,000 bopd over the next three years. “Onshore Trinidad is a low cost, high operating margin environment with oil production sold at the wellhead and transported to the Pointe-a-Pierre Refinery, which has capacity for all additional planned production,” Range executive director Peter Landau said in a statement last week.
“The company believes that there is significant potential for value enhancement given the known management team and will target (subject to exploration success) an ultimate production profile of up to 10,000 bopd over the next two-three years,” he added.