AIM Listed Eland Oil and Gas is not ready for development work on Ubima field, located onshore eastern Nigeria, according to Africa Oil + Gas Report.

The company farmed into the asset as a 40% technical and financing partner to All Grace Energy Ltd., holder of the field, as far back as 2014. The Ubima field is covered with three dimensional (3D) seismic data. Shell, the former operator, had drilled four wells on the structure. It would seem that its development would be easy.

But Eland is not in a hurry to take Ubima to first oil. The company says the scheduling for evaluation and production of Ubima 1 is planned for 2018, with full field development being scheduled for 2019. The exact details of the development will be subject to the results obtained from the Ubima-1 re-entry.

Eland cannot commit adequate time and resources to Ubima just yet because (1) it is busy with an aggressive development drilling campaign on OML 40 and (2), there are still cash flow issues, even with the seeming success of OML 40 (where it now produces in excess of 20,000BOPD from as low as 3,000BOPD three years ago).

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