Proactive Investors - Baron Oil PLC (LON:BOIL) is gathering momentum behind the scenes as Andy Butler continues to put his stamp on the junior energy company that’s preparing to seize an exciting opportunity.
The plan for 2024 could see the company reach a major value catalyst by year’s end.
Right now, Baron is undertaking preliminary work – completing site surveying, rig contracting and permitting for the Chuditch gas discovery in Timor Leste.
Chuditch, first found in 1998 by Shell (LON:SHEL), has the potential to be a significant and valuable project, not least for the state of Timor Leste as the project promises to be a new and important input for its economy.
Its importance to the country is underlined by the state’s active participation in the project via its national energy company Timor Gap EP (TGEP).
Baron holds a 60% interest in Chuditch, with TGEP owning the other 40%.
TGEP’s stake increased earlier this year through an ‘earn-up’ deal in February, acquiring a 15% ‘paying interest' on top of its original 25% carried stake. It will deliver to the project around $7.5 million during 2024 – whilst Baron received $1 million of cash for back costs.
In March, not long after the TGEP deal, Butler was promoted to group chief executive, stepping up from his previous position as the company’s Asia-Pacific lead.
With the fresh financial backing and with Butler at the helm, Baron is now putting in the remaining groundwork for an appraisal programme that aims to not only confirm the scale of opportunity at Chuditch but to also provide insights that the company and Timor Leste can use to develop and commercialise the field.
Key to unlocking the field has been the use of contemporary technology and analysis to better model the discovery.
"The issue in that area tends to be that because of some very shallow geology and some complications in the seabed, seismic imaging at depth has proven very challenging in the past," Butler explained to Proactive.
"You can see [in the data] where the well was drilled by Shell when they discovered this field 25 years ago, but before you couldn't really see the extent of the field, to the parts that go up from the well towards the crest of the field, it was just invisible in the data.
"In the past, you would really be guessing as to how big it [the resource] was. And of course, you can't really invest on that basis.
"So we've been able to do using modern algorithms, seismic reprocessing, and a very intricate and intense process is to get an understanding of all of the geology above the field, in great detail."
Baron’s approach means that now, for the first time, the company is able to properly image the field. And, the image that Baron sees is encouraging in terms of the project’s upside.
According to Butler, the data indicates the original Shell well was drilled at ‘the very margins’ of the field and that the rest of the field could be much larger.
“It's a long, elongated feature set up by a fault," he said, talking geology. "So it's more than 20 kilometres long.
"And the principal location where we're planning to drill will have about 150 metres of gas column in it where there was only 30 metres in the original well."
"We have something that we originally thought was about 700 billion cubic feet of gas."
"The work that we've done has demonstrated that in our mid-case, the resource for the discovery is about 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas. So that's more than a 50% increase in the resources that we thought were present."
Baron has, with its desktop work to date, advanced Chuditch from a higher risk and largely undefined opportunity into a lower risk and investible opportunity that should in a matter of months be put to the test with the drill bit.
Importantly, it is not just the project that’s moved on since Shell drilled in 1998.
The Asian gas market has developed significantly since then.
It is now a very robust market regionally, and, locally, Chuditch is in the vicinity of infrastructure which means the project can potentially delivered commercially without huge capital costs.
First, however, the company’s focus will be on the appraisal programme. The next material item on Baron’s to-do list will be the signing of a rig contract, to secure the timeline to drilling – all the usual planning and permitting items will also need to be checked off too.
"We're also very much looking ahead to what happens after well, and how quickly can we move forward with future activities,” Butler added.
"We're moving forward with fast-track development type of thinking."
Evidently, 2024 and early 2025 promises to be an exciting time for Baron and its shareholders.
Investors will understandably be watching the closely as the project advances.