Oil & Gas Corporate News
Max Petroleum (LON:MXP) (BUY, £0.50) (MXP, 17.75p, ? 1.43%) announced that the Court of Cassation, a panel of the Almaty City Court in Kazakhstan has rejected the Company's appeal of an ongoing tax claim brought against the Company due to a procedural technicality. The Company is therefore again appealing the case to the Supreme Court for consideration. The Company expects the Supreme Court appeals process to take between two and six months. Due to the Court of Cassation's decision, however, the local tax authorities now have the right to require payment of the Tax Claim prior to the ruling of the Supreme Court. The current balance of the Tax Claim is approximately $13.7M after applying previously paid instalments, offsets and accrued interest and penalties. The Company does not expect any material impact on the Company's ongoing exploration and development drilling programme.
Volga Gas (LON:VGAS) (VGAS, 129.5p, ? 1.80%) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Woodhurst Holdings Limited has entered into a binding agreement with Trans Nafta for the purchase of 100% of the share capital of OOO Gazneftedobycha (GND), a subsidiary of Trans Nafta, for a cash consideration of RUR30M (US$1.1M). The principal assets of GND comprise of the Dobrinskoye gas condensate field and a gas processing unit (GPU) in which Volga Gas had previously planned to acquire a 75% interest. The Dobrinskoye field has Russian C1/C2 reserves of 43.2Bcf of natural gas and 2.1mmbbl of condensate, for a total of 9.3mmboe. The field has been in full production since mid-2010 and is currently producing approximately 7.6mmcfd of gas plus 640bpd of condensate (approximately 1,900 boepd). The GPU is being used to process gas from the Dobrinskoye field and, after some modifications and upgrades, will also be used to process gas to be produced from Volga Gas? Vostochny Makarovskoye gas/condensate field, which is located 5km from the GPU.
Petroceltic (LON:PCI) International (PCI, 10p, ? 2.44%) announced the sale, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, of an 18.375% interest in the Isarene Production Sharing Contract (PSC), which includes the Ain Tsila gas condensate discovery, onshore Algeria, to ENEL Trade S.p.A. (ENEL), a fully owned subsidiary of ENEL S.p.A., Europe's second largest electricity utility company. Under the terms of the agreement ENEL has agreed to pay up to US$ 36.75…
