REG - Baron Oil PLC - Entry into Contract Year 3 of Chuditch PSC

Baron OilAnnouncement

19/06/2024 07:00

For best results when printing this announcement, please click on link below:
http://newsfile.refinitiv.com/getnewsfile/v1/story?guid=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20240619:nRSS0216Ta&default-theme=true

RNS Number : 0216T  Baron Oil PLC  19 June 2024

19 June 2024

Baron Oil Plc

("Baron", or the "Company")

Entry into Contract Year 3 of Chuditch PSC, Timor-Leste

Baron Oil Plc (AIM: BOIL) is pleased to provide an update on the status of the
TL-SO-19-16 Production Sharing Contract ("Chuditch PSC" or the "PSC"),
offshore Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste ("Timor-Leste").

Headlines:

·    Chuditch PSC has entered Contract Year Three

·    Bank guarantee increased from US$1 million to US$2 million (net to
Baron Oil)

·    Funding initiatives progressing

·    New investor presentation available on website

Timor-Leste Chuditch PSC: Commitment Status

The Chuditch PSC in Timor-Leste, which Baron operates through its SundaGas
subsidiary, with a 60% working interest in partnership with state-owned joint
venture partner TIMOR GAP Chuditch Unipessoal Lda ("TIMOR GAP"), entered
Contract Year Three of the PSC today, 19 June 2024. This is in line with the
details set out in the operational update released by the Company on 28 May
2024.

Contract Year Three contains a commitment to drill an appraisal well on the
Chuditch gas field, an obligation which was previously subject to seismic data
reprocessing confirming the presence of a significant structure associated
with the field. As previously announced, the successful conclusion of the 3D
seismic reprocessing project, and subsequent interpretation of those data and
other technical studies, has removed that subjectivity; Chuditch has been
demonstrated to be a field of significant scale, interpreted to be >20 km
long with a Pmean Contingent Resource of 1.16 Tcf of gas.

Bank Guarantee

A requirement of the PSC is to provide government regulator Autoridade
Nacional do Petróleo ("ANP") with a security in the form of a bank guarantee.
 Previously, a bank guarantee to the value of US$1.0 million was provided.
 For PSC Contract Year Three, reflective of the increased work programme
commitment, ANP has requested an increase in the total amount of the bank
guarantee to US$2.5 million.  As TIMOR GAP is responsible for 20% of costs in
relation to the PSC, the Company's net share is US$2.0 million, a US$1.0
million increase for Baron.

The new bank guarantee has been issued by Banco Nacional de Comércio de
Timor-Leste ("BNCTL"), a bank wholly owned by the government of Timor-Leste.
 The use of BNCTL is part of the Company's commitment to maximising local
content inside Timor-Leste, but also indicative of its intent to broaden its
business partnerships in-country.

Drill Funding

The Company continues its discussions with additional potential funding
partners regarding participation in the drilling of the appraisal well in
Contract Year Three. These parties include potential strategic investors into
the Chuditch project and enterprises with an interest in developing and / or
taking the gas resources to market.  Whilst there is no certainty of any of
the discussions reaching a completed transaction, the progress is encouraging,
and the Board is confident of the financing being in place in time to enable
drilling of the Chuditch well as planned in early 2025.

Investor Relations:

Baron will be giving a presentation at the Proactive One2One Investor Forum in
London today, followed by a Q&A session and informal networking.  Details
of the event can be found at
https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/register/event_details/445#
(https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/register/event_details/445) .  A copy
of the presentation has been uploaded onto the Company website
www.baronoilplc.com (http://www.baronoilplc.com) and a video recording of the
presentation will be uploaded as soon as it is made available to the Company.

Dr Andy Butler, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"The move into Contract Year Three is an important milestone for the Chuditch
PSC.  The Company's technical and operational teams are making great progress
in preparations for drilling of the Chuditch-2 appraisal well and the parallel
initiatives around funding for drilling and subsequent activities are
advancing at pace."

 

For further information, please contact:

Baron Oil
Plc
+44 (0) 20 7117 2849

Dr Andy Butler, Chief Executive Officer

 

Allenby Capital
Limited                                +44 (0)
20 3328 5656

Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker

Nick Athanas, Nick Harriss, George Payne (Corporate Finance)

Kelly Gardiner, Stefano Aquilino (Sales and Corporate Broking)

 

Cavendish Capital Markets Limited             +44 (0) 131 220 6939
/ +44 (0) 207 397 8900

Joint Broker

Neil McDonald, Pearl Kellie (Corporate Finance)

Leif Powis (Sales)

 

IFC Advisory
Limited
+44 (0) 20 3934 6630

Financial PR and
IR
baronoil@investor-focus.co.uk

Tim Metcalfe, Florence Chandler

 

Qualified Person's Statement

 

Pursuant to the requirements of the AIM Rules - Note for Mining and Oil and
Gas Companies, the technical information and resource reporting contained in
this announcement has been reviewed by Dr Andrew Butler, Fellow of the
Geological Society of London and member of the Society of Petroleum
Engineers.  Dr Butler has more than 27 years' experience as a petroleum
geologist. He has compiled, read and approved the technical disclosure in this
regulatory announcement and indicated where it does not comply with the
Society of Petroleum Engineers' standard.

 

 

Glossary of Technical Terms

 

 Contingent Resources  Those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially
                       recoverable from known accumulations by application of development projects,
                       but which are not currently considered to be commercially recoverable owing to
                       one or more contingencies.

 Mean or Pmean                                                   Reflects an unrisked median or best-case volume estimate of resource derived
                                                                 using probabilistic methodology. This is the mean of the probability
                                                                 distribution for the resource estimates and is often not the same as 2U as the
                                                                 distribution can be skewed by high resource numbers with relatively low
                                                                 probabilities.

 PSC                                                             Production Sharing Contract.

 Tcf                                                             Trillion standard cubic feet of gas.

 

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact
rns@lseg.com (mailto:rns@lseg.com)
 or visit
www.rns.com (http://www.rns.com/)
.

RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our
Privacy Policy (https://www.lseg.com/privacy-and-cookie-policy)
.   END  UPDEKLBFZQLLBBV