Firering Strategic Minerals: From explorer to producer. Watch the video here.
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http://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/london/interview-new-exillon-energy-chief-sees-robust-26604702 Interview: New Exillon Energy chief sees robust future for Russian independent sector London (Platts)--24 Nov 2016 The head of Russia's Exillon Energy, Dmitry Margelov, has predicted a secure future for the country's independent upstream sector, but says a surge of merger and acquisition activity could be on the cards in the next two to three years. In an interview, Margelov, who became chief executive of the London-listed company in March, said he saw little threat to the independent sector from the centralizing tendencies seen in Russia's oil industry in recent years. He also played down the significance of any effort by Moscow to curb oil output in collaboration with OPEC, saying the burden of such a move would probably fall on large companies. "I think our government is interested in having independent producers," Margelov said. "For now I don't see any political risks for our company." "Yes, there is a process of centralization, but from my point of view this pretty strange and unpredictable situation with Bashneft is not a sign that now all assets will go to Rosneft," he said, referring to state-controlled Rosneft's recent acquisition of Bashneft, a deal that led to bribery charges against a government minister.
As a company, "we are in a very strong position and we have every chance to develop our production and sometime maybe in future to acquire new assets," he added. Exillon is currently producing around 15,000 b/d of light, low-sulfur oil, most of it from the Kayumovskoe and Lumutinskoe fields in West Siberia, plus some in the Timan Pechora basin in Russia's far north. It plans a new drilling program in the first half of next year aimed at reviving its declining output. The reboot of the company follows a change of ownership in 2013 in which property investors Alexei Khotin and Alexander Klyachin took the place of Kazakh businessman Maksat Arip as its largest shareholders. Margelov said Exillon had slashed its drilling expenditure at the time of the oil price downturn in 2014, but had now accumulated $100 million of cash, enabling it to take advantage of much-reduced prices in the supply chain and associated rig availability. This is likely to mean horizontal drilling, but from existing wells. Exillon's core West Siberian fields benefit from a tax exemption applicable to challenging geologies, but its estimated lifting costs last year were just $3.3/b and it benefits from easy access to transport infrastructure. The company has avoided entering long-term sales contracts, preferring to be flexible on how it sells its oil, which has an API gravity of around 41 and sulfur content of just 2.2% for the west Siberian fields. The majority of its revenue was from domestic sales last year and it has estimated oil reserves of 500 million barrels. In terms of costs, Margelov said the tendency of larger companies to carry out more drilling in-house and reduce their use of service companies was a boon for upstream independents. "Prices for drilling services in Russia are now really low. There are a lot of companies that have their drill rigs standing with no bidders -- they're very flexible, both on pricing and in terms of payment."
Concerning Russia's offers to join OPEC in curbing output, a suggestion balked at by some large producers, Margelov said he was confident Exillon and others like it would be unaffected, not least due to questions of implementation. "I don't think someone would ever want to freeze the production of a small and independent producer like Exillon -- they don't have any mechanism to do this. I don't think [the government] would like to change taxation right now because people are worried about this," he said. The government "would take measures that would apply to governmental companies like Gazprom Neft, Rosneft, because it's easier." As for the Russian upstream market, Margelov said asset holders currently tended to have an inflated view of the value of their assets, but were likely to modify this as financial stresses on the sector increase. If past cycles are anything to go by, some upstream assets may end up in the hands of banks, which would then want to offload them, he added. "There are some assets that are intended to be sold, but their owners still believe the oil price is around $100/b and expect too much. It takes time for asset owners to understand what the fair price is. Now we will see that some companies will not be able to pay their debts to commercial banks and maybe in some years we will see that some banks got some nice assets just as security... Then of course they would like to sell them," Margelov said. "In two or three years we will see a wave of interesting M&A transactions in Russia."