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Predator Oil & Gas shares down

7.7% on Moroccan permit

MOROCCO BUREAUCRACY and difficulties in finalising for partner/s to source the necessary funding to
approvals from the Moroccan government to develop the gas well. The company holds a 75%
authorise the use of explosives pushed down the interest in the Guercif gas exploration licence,
shares of Predator Oil & Gas on Tuesday, March while Morocco’s ONHYM owns the remaining
7, the firm said in a statement. Predator shares 25% stake.
fell 7.7% on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). In August last year, the firm raised $4mn by
The firm’s executive chair Paul Griffiths said: increasing its shares by 60mn to undertake fur-
“Once the regulatory process has [been] fully ther operations in Morocco to meet increased
complied with, the company will begin MOU-1 demand. Predator Oil & Gas has operations in
testing at the very earliest opportunity”. Trinidad and Ireland as well as Morocco. ™
Through communication with Morocco’s
Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines
(ONHYM) and the Energy Transition and Sus-
tainable Development Ministry, Predator Oil &
Gas has been trying to stimulate and then test
its reservoirs within the Guercif project area
onshore Morocco, but it did not get any feed-
back on its request that included the quantities
of explosive required for the operations.
The company will need to attend a meeting to
agree on the date when explosives will be trans-
ported under police escort from a bunker in
Casablanca to the MOU-1 well site and another
meeting with Guercif local authority for well test
perforating procedures.
The MOU-1 well was drilled in 2021. It is still
unknown when explosive work and the well test
will take place.
Predator announced earlier it was looking Predator has a 75% stake in the Guercif licence area (Image: Predator OIl & Gas)

ExxonMobil seeks government’s

approval for sale of Nigerian assets

NIGERIA EXXONMOBIL (US) is seeking approval from Exxon’s buyer for the shallow water prop-
the Nigerian government to proceed with the erties, the privately-owned Nigerian com-
sale of its $1.2bn shallow-water upstream oper- pany Seplat Energy, is working to get the deal
ations in the West African country, Reuters approved before Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the new
reports. president, is sworn in two months from now.
Exxon announced its intention to sell these Exxon plans to retain its dee-water assets in
assets a year ago, but approval has been with- Nigeria, but future investments will depend on
held since August, without explanation. The US market conditions.
oil major now hopes to speed up the approval Exxon’s Global Upstream President Liam
process. Mallon spoke on the matter ahead of the CER-
Nigeria has lost its position as Africa’s top oil Aweek energy conference in Houston, Texas,
producer due to corruption and security issues, on Monday, March 6, stating that the company
causing major producers such as Shell (UK) and remains committed to Nigeria. He aso com-
TotalEnergies (France) to sell their shallow-wa- mented, though, that the country was “a chal-
ter and onshore assets and leave the country. lenging place to work in.”

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 09•March•2023