Bahamas Petroleum gets more time to drill exploration well

Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC), an oil and gas exploration company with licenses in the Bahamas, has been given more time to perform its work obligations on the company’s four southern licenses.

The BPC has already been given several extensions for the four 100 percent owned offshore licenses with the last being awarded back in 2015.

The licenses were initially awarded in April 2007, extended to 2012 in 2008, and renewed into their second exploration period in 2013. In May 2015, BPC signed a license renewal addendum agreed with the Ministry of Environment and Housing to further extend the southern licenses.

After the licenses had been renewed in 2015, the second exploration term for the licenses was supposed to run until June 2018.

The company’s principal work obligation under the renewal was to start activity on an initial exploration well by April 2017.

BPC said on Tuesday that the Government of the Bahamas extended the time for the performance of the obligations and requirements of the company under its license renewals for a further period of 12 months.

This means that the company will now not be obligated to start activity on an initial exploration well until April 2018.

The company added that its focus was on beginning drilling operations as soon as possible, and was in advanced discussions with various potential funding and operating partners. It is the company’s opinion that the license extension provided by the government would be an important consideration in further advancing these discussions.

BPC has previously announced cost saving measures, including the board and senior management agreeing to certain fee and remuneration deferrals, so as to preserve cash resources through any extended farm-out process. These measures and deferrals will continue until future funding is secured.

As such, the company believes it has sufficient financial resources to go through the conclusion of the farm-out process.