Africa Oil Corp has announced its operating and interim consolidated financial results for the three months ended 31 March 2023
The high impact Venus appraisal campaign commenced with the spud of Venus-1A well, located 13 km to the north of the discovery well Venus-1X, on 4 March. A second drilling rig is expected to join the campaign soon.
On 27 April, the company subscribed for 39,455,741 shares in Impact for US$31.4mn, payable in two tranches, and following the transaction the company will ultimately hold 31.1% of the enlarged share capital in Impact.
The OML 130 drilling campaign commenced on 22 February, with the spud of the first infill well on the Egina oil field. This is the first well in a multi-well programme that is planned for up to nine wells on Egina and Akpo in the license area during 2023 and 2024.
Cash position of Prime* net to the company's 50% shareholding of US$198.5mn and debt balance of US$360.2mn at 31 March, resulting in a Prime net debt position of US$161.7mn, which is a further deleveraging of Prime since Q4 2022.
AOC's cash and cash equivalents at 31 March of US$158.2mn.
The company declared and paid a semi-annual dividend of US$0.025 per share (approximately US$11.5mn) at the end of March 2023. Since end of March 2022, the company has returned more than US$80.0mn to its shareholders through the share buyback programme and the dividend policy.
Africa Oil president and CEO, Keith Hill, commented, "The Venus appraisal programme is progressing per our expectation with a second rig, DeepSea Mira, expected to arrive in Namibia shortly to join the campaign. As already reported, we stood our corner in Impact's Open Offer and will ultimately increase our shareholding in Impact to 31.1%. The interest in Impact provides our shareholders with material exposure to, possibly the most exciting appraisal and exploration work program globally during 2023. We remain the only publicly-listed Independent E&P company with exposure to Venus and its possible westerly extension that will be explored later this year. I am pleased that first quarter 2023 was another robust quarterly period for Prime as demonstrated by its EBITDAX and cash from operations metrics. We have high quality production assets in Nigeria, held through our shareholding in Prime and, these are complemented by our exciting and potentially high impact exploration assets. These include attractive infrastructure-led exploration opportunities in Equatorial Guinea, together with our Block 3B/4B exploration inventory in the Orange Basin, that lie on trend with the recent oil discoveries offshore Namibia."
