The Board of UK investment firm, Westmount Energy, was pleased to announce that it has snagged more shares in JHI Associates Inc., one of the licenced partners for the Canje block offshore Guyana.
This news agency understands that Westmount purchased 287,500 common shares in JHI Associates Inc. (“JHI”) at an aggregate cost of CAD$718,750. The purchase of the 287,500 common shares in JHI was completed on 15 January, 2021.
Following the above purchase, Westmount now holds a total of 5,651,270 shares in JHI, representing approximately 7.7% of the issued common shares in JHI.
Guyana Standard understands that Westmount’s holding in JHI equates to approximately 90% of the value of Westmount’s gross assets as of June 2020. It should be noted that Westmount reported a loss for the year ended June 30, 2020 of £0.1 million, whereas JHI reported a profit before tax of USD $43.3 million for the year which ended 31st December 2018.
For those unfamiliar with JHI, it is a private, Ontario-registered company established in 2014 and focuses on oil exploration opportunities in the emerging Guyana-Suriname Basin. The company’s main asset is a 17.5% carried interest in the Canje Block covering over 4,800 square kilometres, offshore Guyana. This block is located adjacent to and in the same geologic basin as the Stabroek Block which has delivered 18 substantial oil discoveries since 2015, with reported discovered recoverable resources of circa 9 billion oil-equivalent barrels to date.
ExxonMobil, which is the operator of both blocks, acquired in excess of 6,100 km2 of 3D seismic on the Canje Block in 2016. Subsequent processing and interpretation of this dataset has been used to define a substantial prospect inventory on the Block with three prospects (Bulletwood, Jabillo, and Sapote) high-graded as potential targets for the initial drilling campaign.
As a result of a 2018 farm-out to Total, JHI is carried for the drilling of up to four wells and is funded for the drilling of additional wells. Drilling operations at the first well in the Canje drilling campaign, Bulletwood-1, are ongoing since the start of the year with completion of the well anticipated around mid to late February.
Additional Canje drilling will follow-on in the first half of 2021.
