Kosmos Advances W African Gas Asset Sale

US minnow Kosmos Energy is making progress in its talks to sell down its stake in Mauritania and Senegal, it said May 6, as it announced "strong" results for Q1.

CEO Andrew Inglis said: "Our intention to sell down our position in Mauritania and Senegal to around 10% has generated significant industry interest and we have commenced a formal process, with bids expected by the end of summer." It has 28% in the C6, 8, 12 and 3 blocks; C8 holds the Tortue/Ahmeyim LNG project.

As of early May, all major contracts have been awarded for Tortue Phase 1, and construction activity for the project has started with work on the floating production, storage and offtake (FPSO) vessel. In April KBR was awarded the pre-Feed services contract for Phases 2 and 3 of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim project. These next phases are expected to expand capacity of this hub to almost 10mn mt/yr of LNG for export.

Kosmos also completed a $650mn bond offering, so it faces no debt maturities until 2022.

Q1 revenues were $297mn on sales of 5.1mn barrels of oil equivalent (boe), or $56.73/boe including hedging effects, including a mark-to-market loss of $77mn related to oil derivative contracts. Production averaged about 59,500 boe/d, of which about half came from Ghana.

At Jubilee, gas handling reliability was enhanced during the quarter with a spare high-pressure gas compressor now available. Kosmos continues to work with the operator to increase the gas handling capacity, which would allow oil production rates to increase.

At TEN, in March the EN-10 well was completed and brought online, increasing production from the field. An additional production well is expected to be brought on stream around the middle of the year, enabling the field to increase production rates to the FPSO.