Eland Oil & Gas's says Opuama-7 sidetrack well on schedule

Eland Oil and Gas, an oil and gas production development company operating in West Africa with an initial focus on Nigeria, announced that operations for the Opuama-7 sidetrack well remained on track for completion in October and that production from its interest in the OML 40 licence had been ahead of expectations.

The AIM-listed company said the OES Teamwork Rig had now been at the well site for a week and that all preparatory work for drilling had been completed.

In parallel, its joint-venture company, Elcrest Exploration and Production Nigeria, had completed its August lifting of 153,000 barrels of crude from Forcados Terminal, with an average price of $51.44 per barrel achieved, for $7.9m of revenues which were received last week.

Elcrest was expecting to complete a further lifting of 170,000 barrels from Forcados by early October 2017, the company said in a statement.

George Maxwell, the CEO of Eland said he looked forward to Elcrest's liftings and revenues growing further, describing the start of sidetarck operations at Opuama-7 as "positive", predicting initial production of 5,900 barrels of oil a day, beginning in October.

Maxwell added: "We are also very happy with the continued monetisation of OML 40's crude delivered to the Forcados terminal. The recent noteworthy levels of production and record uptime are extremely encouraging and ahead of our forecasts."

As of 1328 BST, shares of Eland Oil & Gas were unchanged at 54.50p.