London South East caught up with Zenith Energy CEO Andrea Cattaneo and asked him about his most recent acquistion. Zenith have just acquired a 22.5% equity stake in the SLK concession in Tunisia for US$1.65M, which includes 30,000 barrels of oil.
This is how Andrea describes the purchase: "We were approached by the vendors of SLK two years ago and unfortunately then Covid came, we made the acquisition and there were a lot of delays in the approval by Tunisian bureaucracy. Eventually in February I decided to come to Tunisia instead of working remotely and the pattern changed completely. We made two acquisitions in thirty days from Ecument Petroleum Tunisia, and we understood the basic mistake we made in the approach for the SLK transaction and within a few months we have been able to complete this transaction."
"SLK is an historical field in the country, it has very large companies as partners, China National Petroleum Corporation and the Kingdom of Kuwait. Proportionally not being important for them it has been neglected for the last 15 years. Historically it had reached production of 20,000 barrels, has been in decline and so CNPC at least have sold to us. This has produced a rather modest amount of oil today, 150 barrels but has huge potential. We believe an injection of ideas and a drilling programme can return at least a few thousand barrels."
"We have a possibility also to buy a second stake of 22.5 which takes us up to 45%, the standard split in Tunisia".