Union Jack Oil plc (LON:UJO) Executive Chairman David Bramhill caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the Biscathorpe-2 well and the next steps for the company.
Q1: Good news out today for Biscathorpe-2 well, can you just talk us through the highlights there?
A1: This is probably one of the strangest wells we’ve ever been involved in because with Egdon a few years on this planning and in February we drilled it and everything looked against us, it really did look like a disaster of a well. As things unfolded and get you all the information, you begin to think hang on a minute, there’s something going on that we don’t know about.
So, we decided, along with Egdon and Montrose, to actually take some rock samples, cuttings from the well and send them up to APT Laboratories and low and beyond, they’ve extracted some good oil from this so this leaves the whole project wide open and expands it as well.
That’s it in a nutshell really, and all very very good. Also, it proves we’re not a one trick pony, everybody knows about West Newton and how good this is but this wouldn’t be far behind it in my opinion.
Q2: You had good news there, there seems to be quite a bit going on, you must be really pleased at the moment?
A2: It makes a change. Remember, we’ve had 3 years of dire luck, and it was dire, you think you’ve cracked it, you go around the corner, you bump into another obstacle. I think Andy Warhol said ’15 minutes of fame’, let’s hope this is longer than 15 minutes but it looks good.
Union Jack Oil is in great shape, of course we are, and people that know me, I’m not very happy very often but I am today, and have been for quite a few weeks, and we’ve got a great team, it all seems to be gelling together.
Q3: What does this mean for the companies involved?
A3: It’s still early days, there’s still maybe 3-4 months of work to get things sorted out on the seismic and plan a new side-track and also see what else we’ve got down there in the Dinantian, all very interesting.
Q4: What are the next steps for Union Jack Oil, what other things are going on at the moment?
A4: We’ve got our first born, Wressle, our discovery which loads 700 barrels a day of oil equivalent, again, we’ve had some dire luck on that on planning, however, we seem to be turning a corner on that one; the appeal, if you heard in November. Not long considering how quickly time passes and Egdon the operators have done everything that the inspector asked for so I’d be highly surprised if this one didn’t go through and that would give us some terrific cash flow.
