MX Oil announces directorate change and Starts Drilling on Aje 5 Offshore Nigeria
MX Oil plc, the AIM quoted oil and gas investment company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Nigel Bruce McKim as Non-executive Director with immediate effect. Nigel will replace Patrick Mendoza, who is stepping down from the Board to pursue other business interests, They also announced that drilling has commenced of the Aje 5 production well located in the proven Aje Field on the OML 113 licence offshore Nigeria. Once Aje 5 has been drilled and completed, which is expected to take approximately 70 days, the rig will proceed to re-enter and complete the Aje 4 well. reports Oilvoice.
Nigel, aged 53, has 28 years of experience in field development planning and production in the oil and gas industry. His most recent role was Chief Operations Officer for Nobel Upstream Group where he was responsible for the company’s technical capabilities and participated in the building of a portfolio of assets in Texas, the UK and Azerbaijan.
Previously, Nigel was Subsurface Manager for Business Development activities and the Liverpool Bay Project at BHP Billiton Petroleum Limited. He also held the position of Director Pre-Developments for Hess Services (UK) Limited, based in London, with global responsibilities for appraisal and early field development planning in Hess’ conventional oil and gas business. Prior to this, he was employed as West Africa Asset Manager at Vitol Services Limited, where he acted as the non-operated representative for the Vitol Congo assets and Nigerian Aje gas field development in 2007. He started in the industry working as a Reservoir Engineer for Shell International in Oman and The Netherlands and Operations Engineer in Gabon.
Nigel holds a BSc (Hons) in Civil Engineering from Bristol University and an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London. He is a Chartered Engineer and also a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and the Engineering Council.
Mr Nigel McKim does not hold, and has not held in the past five years, other directorate positions. He does not hold any interest in the Ordinary Shares of the Company.
Corporate Update
In addition to its Bid Round 1 application, the Company, together with Geo Estratos, has been in active discussions with Pemex with regard to their search for JV partners for assets in Mexico. These discussions are progressing well and the Board expects to be in a position to update the market on these discussions in the coming months.
As previously announced, the Company also expects to hear the result of its pre-qualification application for Bid Round 1 in November 2015, followed by licence awards in December 2015. This coincides with the expected operational milestones regarding drilling at the Aje Field offshore Nigeria and the Company will keep the market appraised of developments.
MX Oil’s Chief Executive Officer Stefan Olivier said:
‘We are delighted to welcome Nigel to the Board as we believe his significant experience in field development planning and production in the oil and gas industry will be instrumental in delivering on our objective to build a leading oil and gas investment company. His appointment is timely as he forms a key part of ours and Geo Estratos’ first rate technical team which we submitted to CNH for our pre-qualification bid earlier this month. With Nigel on board, the group’s technical team collectively has approximately 200 years of oil and gas experience which, thanks to a number of the team having previously worked for Pemex, includes first hand working knowledge of the specific fields we are targeting in the latest Bid Round 1 for onshore Mexican concessions. As a result we believe we have a knowledge advantage which has been key to understanding both the issues and opportunities that exist on the blocks we have analysed. This local expertise and knowledge has played a key role in shaping our strategy in targeting the most attractive blocks for us to focus on.
‘We go into this bidding process full of confidence that we have an exceptional team with very relevant onshore Mexico experience which will both fulfil the prequalification requirements and be able to deliver operationally on the blocks that we intend to win. I am very pleased with the work done over the last few months on our target assets and believe that we will be able to deliver multiple blocks with near term production potential from the forthcoming bid round.’
 Drilling of Aje 5 Development Well Commences Offshore
MX Oil plc, announced that drilling has commenced of the Aje 5 production well located in the proven Aje Field on the OML 113 licence offshore Nigeria. Once Aje 5 has been drilled and completed, which is expected to take approximately 70 days, the rig will proceed to re-enter and complete the Aje 4 well. These two wells represent the first of a three phase development programme of Aje. Phase 1 is targeting first oil in December 2015 and peak gross production of 41 API oil from these two wells is expected to reach 11,000 bopd, as stated in the June 2015 Competent Persons Report (‘CPR’). The CPR also states that Phase 2 is targeting an increase in gross production to 19,000 bopd from an additional two well development. As announced on 13 July 2015, MX Oil has agreed to invest in a 5% revenue interest in OML 113 via Jacka Resources.
The Scarabeo 3 semi-submersible rig was mobilised from its location near Lagos, Nigeria to conduct the drilling of the two wells, Aje 5 as a new production well followed by Aje 4 as a re-entry production well for Phase 1 of the development. Aje 5 is a twin to the legacy Aje 2 well which was production tested at the Cenomanian level in 1997, flowing approximately 3,700 bopd. Aje 5 is being drilled from a seabed location close to Aje 4 in 300 meters water depth.
Once drilling operations are completed, the wells will be tied back to a Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (‘FPSO’), the Front Puffin, which is currently being refurbished in Singapore ahead of installation and commissioning. Installation of the production manifold, flowlines, umbilicals and risers will take place in Q4 2015. The Company anticipates that production could commence from Phase 1 by the end of 2015.
MX Oil’s Chief Executive Officer Stefan Olivier said, ‘This is a major milestone for MX Oil. Having only very recently invested in the Aje field via Jacka Resources and with Aje 5 now being spudded, MX Oil is now progressing quickly towards significant near term production. This is the first of two planned wells in Phase 1 from which our CPR states a target peak gross production of 11,000 bopd. These production figures are expected to increase to 19,000 bopd gross in Phase 2. We look forward to providing further updates on the drill programme as we progress towards anticipated production by December 2015 and in the process build a cash generative platform from which to develop concessions we are targeting in the vast re-opening Mexican energy sector.
Source: Oilvoice