Author: Sinjar » Thu May 17, 2012 7:47 am
Afren's 2012 exploration campaign could be a game-changer, says broker
FTSE 250 oil firm Afren (LON:AFR), which has assets across 12 countries, has a potentially game-changing exploration campaign this year, says Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
It is targeting 630 million barrels of oil equivalent through drilling up to 14 wells across Kurdistan and Africa.
Alongside this, its production guidance of between 42,000 and 46,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) looks eminently "achievable", says BoA Merrill Lynch analyst Alexander Holbourn in a note to clients.
It comes after the company issued a bullish IMS this morning and production update for the first quarter, in which it generated US$300.2 million in net operating cashflow in the three months.
To understand the scale of the firm's ambitions, Holbourn said 2012's target of 630 million barrels of mean resources represented around two thirds of Afren’s current 2P reserve and 2C resource base - of 995 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Today's update from the firm comes after it unveiled last month the ‘potentially transformational’ oil discovery in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq and just a day after a significant find at the Ebok North Fault block in Nigeria.
In Kurdistan, the Simrit-2 discovery well, in which it has 20 per cent stake, found a significant oil accumulation in the Ain Sifni PSC (production sharing contract).
Simrit-2 found an estimated 409 metres of net oil pay – with around 312 metres of that believed to be light oil.
Today, Holbourn highlighted the firm's operational and political progress of the firm in Kurdistan, after the broker's recent field trip to the Barda Rash field - one of the firm's two assets in the region.
At Barda Rash, said the analyst, first oil remained on track for August this year at an expected rate of between 10-15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, contributing 3-5,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the full year 2012.
"Production in the medium-term will be ramped up to trucking capacity of around 35kboe/d, with pipeline capacity enabling 125,000 boe/d by 2017," he added.
In the shorter term for Kurdistan, the analyst said the broker was awaiting the results of flow tests on the JS-2 (Jebel Simrit) well by the end of July, followed by a JS-3 exploration well in the second half of this year.
Holbourn rates the stock a 'buy' and has a price target of 276 pence (current price: 120.60 pence).
Afren also highlighted today its exploration success offshore Nigeria, at the Ebok North Fault Block exploration well, announced yesterday, which found 370 ft of good quality oil pay.
This follows on from the Kurdistan discovery and successes at the Okoro East block, announced in January this year.
Yesterday, the company said the closeness of the Ebok North Fault block to its existing infrastructure at the main Ebok field-production hub meant it could quickly monetise the discoveries.
City heavyweight Morgan Stanley, which rates the firm "overweight", said the Ebok North find firmly established the area as one of Afren’s core producing and development hubs.
"With several Ebok West Fault Block well slots available, we expect rapid partial monetization of the discovery via two producing wells in 2013 (enhancing the find’s economics) followed by a standalone full field development," analyst Jamie Maddock said in a note.
As a result, the broker has increased its target price for Afren to 227 pence, from 218 pence previously, implying around a 90 per cent upside from its current share price.
As for Kurdistan, Maddock said he expected initial Jebel-Simrit-2 well flow tests to provide greater clarity on commerciality and on any possible upside potential.
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