RE: Paid promotions4 Apr 2024 21:14
By NEIL HARTNELL
#Tribune Business Editor
#nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
#A BAHAMAS-based oil explorer has received "a great endorsement" from independent experts who confirmed its chances of success are at least four times' higher than the industry average.
#Simon Potter, Bahamas Petroleum Company's (BPC) chief executive, told Tribune Business that confirmation of the validity of its underwater seismic data "can only be positive" for its joint venture partner search.
#The exploration outfit, whose licence gives it until April 2018 to spud its first exploratory well in waters south-west of Andros, hired Moyes & Co, a petroleum industry consultancy, in August 2017 to assess its prospects of striking 'black gold' in Bahamian waters.The independent analysis, just unveiled by BPC, calculated the company's "probability of success" for each of the seabed oil sources it is targeting as between 25 per cent to 35 per cent.
#Mr Potter said this far exceeded the oil industry's typical 5-10 per cent average, with Moyes & Co verifying that the amount of oil economically recoverable from BPC's southern Bahamian licence fields ranges from a mean of 8.3 billion barrels to "an upside" of 28 billion barrels.
#The consultants' technical audit of BPC's seismic data, and the company's interpretations of such, also confirmed the oil explorer's belief that the project can be economically viable with a field of just 200 million barrels.
#"Moyes independently calculated the probability of success (PoS) factors for each of the major reservoirs assessed, the majority of which were calculated in the 25 to 35 per cent range," BPC said of the consultants' findings. "Though a few are risked at 12-15 per cent.
#"Applying a recovery factor in the range of 20 per cent to 40 per cent to the Moyes [economically recoverable] volumes would result in an unrisked Estimated Ultimate Recoverable (EUR) in the range of 1.6 billion to 3.3 billion barrels (mean), and up to 11 billion barrels (upside)."
#Mr Potter told Tribune Business: "We've always been very excited by the project, and it's very large and of a global scale, but to have independent and technical experts endorse our own numbers is great.
#"It's very reassuring for us, and a great endorsement of the technical work we've done and the work we've asked them to do on our behalf. The economic threshold for a commercial development is somewhere below 200 million barrels, when the oil industry is average is 500 million to one billion barrels.
#"The audit confirms we can be commercial and viable below 200 million barrels, and the technical experts have endorsed multiple thousands of millions of barrels, not just 200 million."
#Mr Potter acknowledged that "the numbers can be eye-watering at times", but also pointed to Moyes & Co's assessment of BPC's drilling success prospects as far higher than the global oil industry's average.
#"They also said the probability of success is between 25 per cent a
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