OIL and gas firm Bowleven has suffered a disappointment under its new management team with an eagerly-anticipated well off Cameroon.
Bowleven, which moved its headquarters from Edinburgh to London following a boardroom upheaval last year, said the IM-6 well had failed to make an additional commercial discovery.
The well was the first drilled by Bowleven since former chief executive Kevin Hart and four other directors were voted off the board in March last year.
The vote followed a campaign for change led by the Crown Ocean Capital investment firm founded by German financiers Christian Petersmann and Konstantin Stoyanov.
The new Bowleven management team headed by chief executive Eli Chahin decided to focus the company on the offshore Etinde permit, on which it had enjoyed drilling success under Mr Hart.
In May Mr Chahin said the start of drilling on the IM-6 well was a significant event for Bowleven, its shareholders, partners and stakeholders in Cameroon.
In Bowleven’s announcement of the preliminary results of the well yesterday, Mr Chahin said: “It is disappointing that the IM-6 well did not make an additional commercial discovery.”
However, he added: “The data collected is vital in further defining the existing 410 intra-Isongo discovery.”
Aim-listed Bowleven underlined the potential of the intra-Isongo discovery after completing appraisal drilling under Mr Hart in 2013.
The following year the company sold stakes in Etinde to New Age of Cameroon and Russia’s Lukoil in a $250 million deal.
Bowleven has a 25 per cent working interest in Etinde, which is operated by New Age.
Up to $40 million of the company’s costs of drilling two wells on Etinde will be carried by New Age and Lukoil under the deal concluded in 2014.
Mr Chahin said Bowleven looks forward to drilling the prospective IE-4 well.
He noted this offers the potential to provide an increase to Bowleven’s discovered resource volumes, and to derisk several other potential prospects.
The partners in Etinde are preparing to plug and abandon the IM-6 well.
In March Mr Chahin said Bowleven had achieved a swift turnaround after changing its strategic and operating model.
He said a large part of management’s focus in the past year had been on right sizing the company to reflect the needs and commitments of its current portfolio.
This included moving the head office to London. Bowleven shed around 30 jobs in the course of the shake up.
After being voted off the board, Mr Hart defended the performance of the company in his 10 years in charge. He noted the firm had found a lot of oil and gas off Cameroon but was frustrated by geopolitical factors.
Mr Hart joined Bowleven in 2006 from Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy, which went on to make big finds off Senegal.
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