UK independent Afren has sharply reduced its reserve estimates for its Barda Rash block in Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), effectively scrapping nearly bookable reserves as it sought an exit from the challenging field. The company’s shares fell 30% on the news, which comes on the heels of payment irregularities in Nigeria.
Afren, which has a 60% operator’s stake in Barda Rash, says that an annual reserves review is expected to show a material reduction to previously published reserve estimates, essentially eliminating gross proven reserves of 190mn barrels and revising mean contingent reserves down to just 250mn barrels from a previous estimate of 1.243bn barrels. (CONTINUED - 497 WORDS)
