Value appreciation for shareholders key to LEKOIL’s 2019 strategy- CEO

Africa focused oil and gas exploration and production company, LEKOIL has indicated that value appreciation for shareholders is central to its 2019 strategy.

“The priority for 2019 is to grow production volumes at Otakikpo through Phase Two development (subject to funding) to reach gross volumes of 15,000 to 20,000 bopd. The first step has already occurred, with 3D seismic data acquisition and interpretation now completed,” Olalekan Akinyanmi, LEKOIL chief executive said in a note that accompanied its 2018 financial report.

“The next year [2019] should therefore provide key catalysts for value appreciation for shareholders as we move forward in building a leading Africa-focused exploration and production business,” the CEO said in the note.

LEKOIL was founded in 2010 by a group of leading professionals with extensive experience in the international upstream oil and gas industry as well as in global fund management and investment banking.

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Working with partners, government and regulatory agencies, the company has sustained production levels and continues an aggressive investment campaign which is projected to result in increased production and profitability in the short to medium term.

“We also continue to advance toward the start of the appraisal drilling programme on Ogo in OPL 310. We will work with our joint venture partner, Optimum to negotiate agreements that will allow us to make progress on the block, after securing all relevant regulatory extensions and approvals,’ Akinyanmi said.

Apart from its interests in OML 310, the company and its partners finalized Technical Evaluation on OPL 325 in January 2018. Its consultants, Lumina, identified and reported on 11 prospects and leads which were estimated to contain potential gross aggregate Oil-in-Place volumes of over 5,700 mmbbls (un-risked, Best Estimate case).

After finalising terms for a Production Sharing Contract on the block, LEKOIL intends to farm-down a portion of its 62 per cent working interest following a detailed prospect/lead risking study.

ISAAC ANYAOGU

Isaac Anyaogu is an Assistant editor and head of the energy and environment desk. He is an award-winning journalist who has written hundreds of reports on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, energy and environmental policies, regulation and climate change impacts in Africa. He was part of a journalist team that investigated lead acid pollution by an Indian recycler in Nigeria and won the international prize - Fetisov Journalism award in 2020. Mr Anyaogu joined BusinessDay in January 2016 as a multimedia content producer on the energy desk and rose to head the desk in October 2020 after several ground breaking stories and multiple award wining stories. His reporting covers start-ups, companies and markets, financing and regulatory policies in the power sector, oil and gas, renewable energy and environmental sectors He has covered the Niger Delta crises, and corruption in NIgeria’s petroleum product imports. He left the Audit and Consulting firm, OR&C Consultants in 2015 after three years to write for BusinessDay and his background working with financial statements, audit reports and tax consulting assignments significantly benefited his reporting. Mr Anyaogu studied mass communications and Media Studies and has attended several training programmes in Ghana, South Africa and the United States