Brief summary30 Oct 2021 12:22
MH took over running the company December 2018 after our previous CEO Fiona MacAulay ran the company into the ground, when MH took over were were loaded with debt and on the verge of bankruptcy.
MH bought 70% interest in Santa Cruz field late 2019, he made clear his intention to take ECHO forward with low cost, low risk strategy, testing of the Campo Limite well was suspened 15th April 2020 due to the pandemic, our oil producing wells in the Campo Molino field were shut in due to the low oil price at the time (sub $30 bbl) plus the fact we could not sell the oil due to the decreased demand due to the pandemic.
April 1st 2021 our $20 million bond was restructured, this is not now payable until 2025, on this news the sp briefly touched 1.9p on April 1st .
Shortly after this it was announced urgent pipeline replacement was required with this work spanning April, May and June 2021, on completing this work ECHO started bringing the 10 Campo Molino wells back into production, the first 4 back in production were announced August 26th, these 4 wells each produced twice the oil the were producing when shut in April 2020.
Another 3 of the Campo Molino wells were brought back to production and announced on the 5th Oct 21, each of these 3 wells also producing at twice the 2020production rates, we are waiting news on the final 3 Campo Molino wells which I suspect will also offer positive news very shortly, in total Campo Molino should be worth around 250 bbl/d net to ECHOs 70% share.
On the 14th October we received news that the first workover had been completed and this flowed at 76 bbl/d, we have another 15 workover waiting to be completed, I think it likely the next workover wells are being worked on right now.
If we are being conservative we might use an average production rate of 45 bbl/d from each of these 16 wells once all 16 are back in production, the figure could be higher or lower, who knows, but 16 x 45 would equate to 720 bbl/d, add these onto the Campo Molino production we should be on or around an oil production of 1000 bbl/d.
The above work is in line with MHs low cost low risk strategy. For details of the workovers see page 9 of the latest presentation.
On top of the expected 1000 bbl/d mentioned above we can add on our current gas production which we are selling the bulk off to commercial customers so the end of winter should not have a great effect on gas sales.
It was recently announced that Argentina will open its borders on November 1st, this would allow the specialists required for Campo Limite testing to enter the country, we can only guess what CL might bring to the table but the signs look very very good, might I suggest you read the RNS released 30th January 2020 ref CLix-1001 well, also we should not forget Monte Aymond (ref 29th Sept 2020 RNS), this previously produced gas flow of 5 MMscf/d before being shut in years ago when oil was the prize, MA will require a reasonably inexpensive workover and there are various opt