Hibiscus nearing Kitan acquisition

Hibiscus Petroleum has skipped a hurdle towards acquiring a stake in the Kitan oil field, located in the Timor Sea, from Talisman Energy.

The Kitan field is located in the Bonaparte Basin within the Australia-Timor Leste Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) approximately 550km North East of Darwin, Australia.

In a Bursa Malaysia filing posted today, Hibiscus has said that the Australian Government’s Foreign Investment Review Board (“FIRB”) has, via its letter dated 21 August 2014, stated that the FIRB has no objections to the proposed acquisition of a 25 percent stake in the field by Hibiscus, in terms of Australia’s foreign investment policy.

The completion of the proposed acquisition, valued around $18 million, is currently pending, inter-alia, approval being obtained from the relevant authorities of Timor-Leste.

Following the completion of the transaction the stakeholders in the field will be as follows: Italy’s Eni will own 40%, Japanese oil company Inpex will have 35% and  Hibiscus Petroleum, Malaysia’s first listed independent oil and gas exploration and production company will own 25%.

The Kitan field is developed by a subsea production system with three subsea wells tied back to the Glas Dowr Floating Production Storage Offloading Unit (FPSO). Wood Mackenzie estimates that the remaining reserves of the Kitan field on 1st January 2014  were 17 million barrels of oil (4.25 million barrels net to Hibiscus) and that the average production rate for 2014 will be 10,000 barrels of oil per day (2,500 barrels of oil per day net to
Hibiscus) from three subsea wells.