Highlights
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BPC has been awarded the OFF-1 license, offshore Uruguay
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OFF-1 contains a management estimated resource potential of up to 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE), based on current mapping from multiple exploration plays and leads in relatively shallow waters with significant running room
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The OFF-1 licence play system is directly analogous to the prolific Cretaceous turbidite discoveries currently being evaluated/developed offshore Guyana and Suriname
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OFF-1 has an initial 4-year exploration period, with a work obligation limited to reprocessing and reinterpretation of selected historical 2D seismic data – there is no drilling obligation, and the licence includes staged no-cost exit points at BPC's sole election
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OFF-1 is thus comparable to the "low cost option" represented by BPC's licences in The Bahamas when they were first awarded – a modest work commitment over 4 years that secures a sizeable, technically high quality, frontier play, with regional seismic available and exciting exploration upside
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Uruguay is a stable, well-regulated operating environment with an attractive, internationally comparable fiscal regime
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BPC believes that OFF-1 has the capacity to generate similar value uplift to the Company's existing licences in The Bahamas, where the Company's primary focus remains commencement of exploration drilling on Perseverance #1, expected to spud in late 2020 / early 2021, and targeting recoverable P50 oil resources 0.77 billion barrels, with an upside of 1.44 billion barrels
About AREA OFF-1
Technically, the OFF-1 exploration play is similar in nature to the prolific Guyana – Suriname basin currently being successfully explored by multiple oil companies, as well as the Cretaceous turbidite plays that have been successfully explored offshore north-eastern South America.
There has been considerable licencing activity proximate to OFF-1 in recent years. During 2019, oil majors Shell, BP, Total and Equinor bid for and were awarded various licences offshore Argentina, adjacent to ours which is proximate to the Argentina-Uruguay maritime border, and where the primary targets in those licences are likely to be the same Cretaceous plays potentially present in OFF-1. More recently, In December 2019, Kosmos Energy bid for and was awarded the two adjacent Uruguayan offshore blocks to OFF-1.
Simon Potter, Chief Executive Officer of Bahamas Petroleum Company, said:
"We are especially pleased to have been awarded OFF-1 given that the licence represents a similarly underappreciated opportunity to that secured by the Company in 2007 in The Bahamas – a licence in a region with extensive existing seismic of various vintages, but largely underexplored, and requiring the application of more modern, state of the art seismic imaging technology and techniques to understand the full extent of the petroleum resource."
Source: Investigate
