United Oil & Gas Completes Egyptian Takeover

United Oil and Gas announced on February 28 it had completed its acquisition of the Egyptian assets of fellow London-listed player Rockhopper Exploration.

The $16mn purchase of Rockhopper Egypt, which has a 22% non-operating stake in the producing Abu Sennan oil and gas concession, has been backdated to January 1 2019, United said. The company funded the deal, first announced in July last year, with an equity placing and a lending facility provided by BP. It has entered into an offtake agreement with BP for its future oil and gas supplies.

Production at Abu Sennan averaged 7,900 barrels of oil equivalent/day in the first half of February, United said, netting the company more than 1,700 boe/day. Output may rise further pending results from an ongoing infill drilling programme. The first of four wells in this fully-funded programme was spudded on February 3.  Construction of a gas pipeline at the concession's Al Jahraa should also wrap up shortly, United said, bringing an extra 1,000 boe/day of gas supply on stream.

The concession holds multiple exploration targets as well, which United believes hold a combined 29.4mn boe in gross unrisked prospective resources.

United's partners at the Abu Senan concession are Kuwait Energy, which operates the project with a 25% interest, Global Connect with an additional 25% and Dover Investments with 28%.