LONDON (Alliance News) - Sirius Petroleum PLC said Tuesday it will not pay a dividend this year on a broadly flat full year loss.
In the twelve months ended 2017, the oil & gas exploration company posted a pretax loss of USD2.3 million up from USD2.2 million with a widened operating loss of USD2.1 million from USD1.4 million.
Sirius expects to be in a position to "commence the extraction of hydrocarbons" from the Ororo field in the current year.
The Farmout Agreement the company has for the Ororo Field is due to expire at the beginning of May 2019. It is expected Ororo-2 will deliver initial production of about 2,7000 barrels of oil per day and 6 million cubic feet per day of gas.
An independent assessor estimates that Ororo has a mid case net present value of USD96.1 million, based on a USD65 per barrel real oil price for the life of the field.
Sirius continues to "seek to farm into or acquire" high quality asset located in major producing complexes. During the period and into the current year, the company has "continued with a range of discussion to farm into a number of opportunities".
Chief Executive Bobo Kuti said: "The end of 2017 marked a milestone for the company including the financial resources to commence the development phase of the Ororo Field, the company's first offshore marginal field oil and gas asset and as a consequence, since the 2017 year end, the group has undergone both a financial and operational transformation.
"During 2018 the group commenced a range of work streams with its operational partners: Add Energy, Schlumberger and COSL which included additional technical work such as the developing the Mechanical Earth Model with the team at Schlumberger in order to optimize the drilling program on Ororo-2 and Ororo-3. The rig identification has been made in preparation for final mobilization and continued equipment requisitions such as the Compact Well Head Systems for Ororo-2 and Ororo-3 and more recently for Ororo-4 and Ororo-5."
Shares in Sirius closed up 1.8% at 0.84 pence each Tuesday.
