Regal Gets Back Into Ukraine Wells
Ukraine-focused Regal Petroleum can continue its drilling operations as normal, as a court has suspended an unreasoned order to halt production at its Vasyschevskoye gas and condensate field, it said March 19.
The official website of the state geological and subsoil service published an order March 11, which was never served on Regal, whereby the latter would have to shut down production operations within 20 days of licence suspension. Accordingly its local subsidiary PEP was preparing for a possible shutdown of production.
Regal challenged the validity of the order in the Ukrainian court, and the court ruled on interim measures to suspend the order pending a hearing of the substantive issues of the case to be held in due course. "The effect of this ruling is that the abovementioned 20 day period is also suspended pending the substantive hearing," Regal said.
The Vas field is growing: it produced 94,752 m³/d of gas and 8.2 m³/d of condensate last year, compared with 86,010 m³ /d of gas and 6.5 m³/d of condensate in 2017.
Ukraine has been making much of its upstream opportunities for oil and gas producers, and explaining the improvements that have been made in their regulation in recent years. It is auctioning off a number of blocks through innovative online auctions, now underway, so any news of arbitrary cancellations of licences would be particularly damaging.
The next, second oil and gas licensing round will be held May 2, using the online ProZorro (Ukr. for 'transparency') e-platform. There are seven proposed concession areas covering over 1 000 km² in two proven petroleum provinces with well-developed midstream infrastructure and widely covered by geophysical surveys," according to the Ukrainian gas producers' association.
This month sees the presidential elections: incumbent Piotr Poroshenko has been the target of political attacks, led by nationalists. Most recently they have taken to catapulting toy piglets in his direction on his campaign trail, symbolising corruption.