Chariot hunts for oil partner

LONDON – Namibia-focused oil and gas explorer Chariot Oil & Gas intends looking for partners early next year, as it reported a sharply narrower fiscal first-half pre-tax loss, Dow Jones Newswires has reported.

Chariot said it would invite potential partners to review recently completed seismic data on its licences offshore Namibia in the first quarter of 2010 in a bid to bring bigger companies on board to help develop them. It sold a 50 per cent interest in block 2417A to Brazil’s Petrobras Energia SA in May.Chief Executive Paul Welch told Dow Jones Newswires on Monday that Namibia is attracting increasing interest from oil majors seeking more or less untapped resources. Other players in the region include Tullow Oil.’It is truly one of the last parts of western Africa that’s virgin territory,’ said Welch, who joined the company earlier this month, having earlier held senior roles at Hunt Oil Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell.Welch said Chariot, which had roughly US$25 million in cash at October 30, is also seeking to acquire assets in Africa which are either in production or close to it.He said the company doesn’t expect to be in production from its Namibia licenses until 2013 or 2014 and it would like revenue from production sooner.’We want to look for some nearer-term potential to move that first oil date forward to about 2011,’ he said.Welch said there are opportunities to acquire assets from US firms looking to sell them because of low gas prices in their home market, although he wasn’t specific. It would probably expect to report revenue from production in the next fiscal year, he said.Chariot, which listed on London’s junior Alternative Investment Market in 2008, said its pre-tax loss for the six months to August 31 was US$1,49 million compared to a loss of US$11 million a year earlier. It didn’t report any revenue.Earnings in the year-earlier period were weighed on by the costs of an initial public offering, share options and higher administrative costs. Earlier this year, Chariot said the oil seepage slicks from the blocks indicate a ‘working petroleum system’.’The Namibian oil and gas sedimentary basins are relatively under-explored frontier basins for hydrocarbon accumulations. To date, there has been a total of 14 wells drilled offshore Namibia. As Namibia is a conjugate margin to Brazil in the south Atlantic, it shares a common geological history and petroleum system style,’ the company said.’The one prospect and 22 leads discovered to date, mean prospective resources of 5,24 million barrels of oil and liquid,’ Chariot claimed.Their interest is further tickled by the close proximity of oil, natural gas and condensate accumulations, as well as their multidisciplinary approach which demonstrates that Namibia ‘contains mature source rocks and hydrocarbon migration pathways to reservoirs’.- Own Report and Dow Jones Newswires