Gulf Keystone has announced that it has mandated Deutsche Bank and Pareto Securities to arrange a series of fixed income investor meetings in the US, Europe and Asia commencing 20 March 2014. A debt offering of up to US$250 million in accordance with Reg S/144A is expected to follow, subject to market conditions.
On 13 March 2014, Gulf Keystone released an Operational and Corporate Update and published the first third party audit of the Company’s reserves, contingent resources and prospective resources for its petroleum interests in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq comprising the Shaikan, Sheikh Adi, Ber Bahr and Akri-Bijeel blocks.
The Company continues to maintain current stable production and sales levels at an average of 10,000 barrels of oil per day (“bopd”) from the Company’s first Shaikan production facility (PF-1). In addition, Shaikan-4, the third production well, recently tied-in to PF-1, has been flowing at up to 6,000 bopd in the recent week.
The Company’s immediate focus remains on achieving its target of 40,000 bopd of production capacity from PF-1 and PF-2 in 2014, which will allow further expansion of export crude oil sales. The Company estimates that achieving this level of production capacity at Shaikan, as well as continuing planned expenditure at Sheikh Adi, Ber Bahr and Akri-Bijeel, will require capital expenditure of approximately US$210 million in 2014.
To complete this work programme, the Company expects to seek additional funding via a debt offering of up to US$250 million to enhance its existing cash resources, which totalled US$81.9 million as at 31 January 2014. Whilst there can be no certainty that a debt transaction will follow the Company’s investor meetings, any debt raised will support the completion of the Company’s move to 40,000 bopd of production capacity.
The Company expects to utilise cash generated from increasing oil sales, in addition to the funds remaining from the contemplated raising of up to US$250 million in debt financing, to initiate the next stage of the Shaikan project execution and increase production capacity from 40,000 bopd to 66,000 bopd by Q1 2016.