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Eland Oil & Gas delivers for investors as it hits milestone

Published: 12:11 23 Oct 2017 BST

onshore drilling operation
Opuama-7 will come online as a producer soon

Eland Oil & Gas PLC’s (LON:ELA)  patient investors are now seeing the company delivering on its production growth plans in Nigeria.

The company has reached an important and highly anticipated milestone with the completion of the side-track to the Opuama-7 well.

Production imminent

Opuama-7 will come online as a producer soon – the company’s guides that it is coming ‘imminently’ – and it is expected to add some 5,900 barrels of oil per day to Eland’s production profile.

Production presently amounts to around 12,000 barrels per day, coming from the Opuama-1 and Opuama-3 wells, and with the addition of the Opuama-7 side-track the company is building meaningful scale.

Following the recent ramp up, the company has now decided to accelerate its growth plans – with as many as three more wells now in the works. The Opuama-7 completion, the drill team will shortly move on to the Opuama-8 well site and two further wells may be drilled after that.

Opuama-8 site is expected to deliver between 5,000 and 7,000 of additional production, and as such represents another significant catalyst for Eland.

It means Eland is on-track to double output

George Maxwell, Eland CEO said in a statement that: “Together with our partner NPDC, the Company has tripled production form Opuama in the last 18 months and following a successful Opuama-7 and infill campaign is expected to double production again by the end of Q1 2018.” 

“We remain committed to developing OML 40 to its full potential and optimising our attractive acreage position in a capital efficient manner and look forward to the re-entry and completion of Gbetiokun-1 in 2018."

Current production and sales

Eland also told investors that existing production operations remain strong.

 It said that the field yielded some 12,000 bopd, coming from the Opuama-1 and Opuama-3 wells, in the period between July 1 and October 20.

Additionally, it noted that a 171,000 barrel crude lifting took place in September, with the oil sold at an average price of US$54.66 per barrel, generating US$9.3mln of revenue. The payment is due before the end of this month.

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