Bahamas Petroleum Company PLC, Providence Resources PLC, ADM Energy PLC, Union

() will convene an extraordinary general meeting and it revealed a number of material changes to the business including a £6.9mln capital raise, a new chief executive, and a rebrand to ‘Challenger Energy Group PLC’.

Challenger Energy will in the near-term focus on cashflow and production whilst managing a cost cutting initiative to reduce its operational cost by at least 20% to 30%. Eytan Uliel, currently commercial director, will become the company’s new chief executive and Simon Potter is to transition to a non-executive director role, effective from May 20.

The company is to raise £6.9mln with an open offer to qualifying shareholders, issuing some 1.96bn new shares priced at 0.35p. Shareholders will be able to buy 1 new share for every 2.46 shares they hold. Any shares not taken up will be sold to institutional investors at the same price.

() on Thursday announced the termination of a partnership to develop the Barryroe oil field offshore Ireland.

Spot-On Energy – a Norwegian vehicle with ties to a number of service providers including Schlumberger, Maersk Drilling, and others – previously agreed to team-up with Providence to advance Barryroe towards production, but the Irish company confirmed that conditions to close the deal had not been met.

Providence said today it would now lead the project development and funding arrangements. Alan Linn, who joined as chief executive in January 2020, believes the new plan for the project will be “very beneficial” for shareholders.

() inked agreements with two service providers which are set to collaborate in the future development of the Barracuda field. The agreements are with OES Energy Services Ltd, which is Nigeria’s largest swamp rig services provider, and, contractor 4Mation Drilling Services.

ADM said the plan is to explore opportunities to develop Barracuda with OES providing swamp rigs and 4Mation providing project management services including well engineering services and technical personnel.

The contractors may potentially provide vendor financing to cover the scope of work.

() told investors the West Newton  B-1Z appraisal well has successfully completed cased hole logging and vertical seismic profiling operations. The next phase of work will see a service rig used to perforate and stimulate the Kirkham Abbey formation ahead of flow testing.

This work expected to get underway in May with operations slated to take around 4 weeks. Following the completion of the WNB-1Z well, the company intends to restart testing at the WNA-2 well.

’s () quarterly activities update said the Merlin well is able to be re-entered to drill a side-track that could be flow-tested. It comes after the well provided some evidence of oil but due to equipment failure and poor hole conditions, could not be fully tested.

The company earlier this month decided to plug the well as it was now too late in the season to start a testing programme. Multiple potentially hydrocarbon-bearing zones were encountered in the well, which can be re-opened for future programmes.

() highlighted significant progress with its natural gas-focused exploration strategy, as it released results for 2020. The company’s prospects were boosted recently with confirmation in March that Shell had ‘greenlit’ plans for the Pensacola exploration well which is slated to be drill next year.

() completed the acquisition of an interest in the Buffalo PSC, offshore Timor-Leste. The transaction, which constitutes a reverse takeover, sees the company acquire a 50% stake in the Carnarvon Petroleum Timor vehicle which owns 100% of the Buffalo PSC.

() started the workover of the Duff-2 well at the Greater Stanley project in Texas. The Duff-2 well will be recompleted in a zone which is in production at the adjacent Stanley field.

Gross costs for the programme are estimated at US$50,000, of which US$20,000 will be covered by…