Africa Oil & Gas: Namibia Wildcat ‘Final Throw of the Dice’ for Chariot

The wildcat prospect S in Namibia is “arguably the final throw of the dice” for Chariot Oil & Gas Limited, according to analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, accoridng to Rigzone report.

In a brief report sent to Rigzone, the analysts said the company had “no activity of note in 2017, with all the excitement being around the Rabat Deep well drilled earlier in 2018, which was a duster”.

The Rabat Deep 1 well in Morocco targeted the JP-1 prospect, however no hydrocarbon accumulation was encountered.

“The company managed to raise $16.5 million before the Rabat Deep well result, which has given them the ability to drill the wildcat prospect S in Namibia later in 2018,” Ashley Kelty and Jack Allardyce, oil and gas research analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, said in the research note.

“This is a high-risk exploration well and is arguably the final throw of the dice for the company. If the well comes in, it will be a company maker, but given the virgin basin that is being drilled, and the historical lack of success in Namibia, the future of the company is binary on the result,” they added.

Chariot expects prospect S to spud in the fourth quarter of this year. The asset holds 459 million barrels of gross mean prospective resources, according to the company.

In Chariot’s latest financial results statement, released Wednesday, Larry Bottomley, the company’s chief executive, said the drilling results of Rabat Deep 1 were “very disappointing”.

Chariot’s loss after tax for the year to December 31, 2017, was $55.4 million, which is $48.6 million higher than the $6.8 million loss incurred for the year ended December 31, 2016.source: Rigzone