BOWLEVEN, the oil and gas firm which moved its headquarters from Edinburgh recently in the wake of a boardroom cull, is set to resume drilling off Africa following a four-year hiatus.
The company, now based in London, said it has reached an outline agreement with partners to drill two appraisal wells on the Etinde licence off Cameroon next year.
“All partners are closely aligned on well locations and a final decision will be taken in early 2018,” said Aim-listed Bowleven. The two well programme is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of next year.
The last well Bowleven drilled on Etinde was IM-5 in 2013.
In 2014 it sold stakes in Etinde to Cameroon’s New Age and Lukoil of Russia in a $250m deal. The buyers agreed to cover up to $40 million of Bowleven’s costs for two appraisal wells on Etinde.
Kevin Hart, who had been chief executive since 2006, was voted off the board in March with four other directors after a campaign for change led by the Crown Ocean Capital investment company.
It accused the management team led by Mr Hart of destroying significant shareholder value after incurring heavy losses under a strategy that involved costly exploration activity in Cameroon.
After leaving Bowleven, Mr Hart said the company had found a lot of oil and gas off Cameroon in his time in charge but was frustrated by geopolitical factors.
The new management team has decided Bowleven should focus on core Cameroon assets including a 20 per cent stake in Etinde. It is led by chief executive Eli Chahin.
The last member of the old guard, David Clarkson, resigned from the board following Bowleven’s annual general meeting yesterday.
Last month Bowleven said Mr Clarkson had elected to retire as chief operating officer with immediate effect.Chairman Chris Ashworth said then with Bowleven completing its transition to a holding company, there was no longer a role for such an officer. The firm has shed around 30 jobs since March.
Mr Clarkson was the only director Crown Ocean did not seek to have voted off the board in March. Former chairman Billy Allan was re-elected. He resigned in March.
Owned by financiers Christian Petersmann and Konstantin Stoyanov, Crown Ocean has a 28.18 per cent stake in Bowleven.
Shares in Bowleven closed down 0.75p at 28.5p.
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