(Alliance News) - Shares in Bahamas Petroleum Co PLC surged on Tuesday, in the wake of the exploration firm announcing it was awarded an offshore licence in Uruguay.
Shares in the company were 12% higher at 3.20 pence each in London on Tuesday morning.
Bahamas Petroleum was awarded the AREA OFF-1 petroleum licence, which contains an estimated resource of up to one billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The licence has an initial four-year exploration period and the company has no drilling obligation. The agreement also has the option of staged no-cost exit points at Bahamas Petroleum's discretion.
Chief Executive Officer Simon Potter said: "The scale of the opportunity that our planned drilling campaign in The Bahamas may unlock for us, at the end of 2020, means that our personnel are and will remain entirely focussed on their efforts to deliver the Perseverance #1 exploration well successfully.
"However, the current period of introspection in our industry is presenting nimble, forward-thinking companies such as ourselves with compelling opportunities to expand our portfolio and achieve countercyclical growth. The recently-closed open licencing round in Uruguay presented exactly such an opportunity for us where, for very low cost, we have been able to secure an exploration licence of an extremely high-calibre that, even as recently as a few months ago, we most likely would have been outbid on by much larger players."
By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com
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