SOCO posts record figures

Oil and gas firm Soco International posted record revenues and profits for the year after reporting its first return to full year production since 2007.Pre-tax profit jumped to $93.4m from $37.3m before, demonstrating the impact of a full year's earnings from its two new producing assets in its South East Asia portfolio. Revenue surged to $131m from £55m last year. Total production during 2009 was 6,415 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOEPD) sourced from its Vietnam and Thailand operations compared with 2,533 BOEPD produced from these continuing operations in 2008. This increase reflects a full year of production in Vietnam and Thailand compared with five and four months, respectively, in 2008."With our most active drilling programme offering the most upside potential in terms of adding reserves just ahead for us, 2010 will be an eventful year. While past performance is no guarantee of future success, given SOCO's track record on delivering development projects on time and to budget and its previous drilling success ratio we are confident that we will be able to report significant progress during 2010," said the group.Due to the continuing need to finance current and future exploration, appraisal and development projects, the group said it is not recommending a dividend.