A Canadian oil company has earned US$97 million from the sale of its 25 per cent stake in an exploration block off the east coast. Sonde Resources Corp, closed the sale of its 25 per cent stake in Block 5(C), to another Canadian company, Niko Resources, last week. Niko Resources was fined US$9.6 million and given three years’ probation after it pleaded guilty to charges that it bribed a Bangladeshi official. The charges stemmed from providing a car worth C$191,000 and a C$5,000 trip to Canada and the United States to A.K.M. Mosharraf Hossain, a junior energy minister responsible for assessing compensation after Niko well blowout in the country in early 2005.
According to Canadian newspaper reports, Sonde Resources sold its stake in the block as it wanted to focus on drilling in Western Canada, after the closing of a $97-million US deal to give up its stake in an offshore exploration block in Trinidad and Tobago. The Calgary Herald quoted Sonde CEO Jack Schanck as saying that the company will pay down debt and have US$62.7 million left for exploration. The sale of the stake in the block, which is being operated by British Gas International, came six months after the company first announced its intention to sell. Schanck was reported by the Calgary newspaper as saying that the sale was held up by a drawnout regulatory approval process from the island nation’s government.
Previously called Canadian Superior Energy Inc., Sonde was renamed after emerging from creditor protection last year. The firm’s “strategic focus” is on horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing in what Schanck called the “prolific” Kaybob and Drumheller area of Alberta. The company will also target other liquids-rich formations. An oil well Sonde drilled and tested earlier this year with its Libyan and Tunisian partners won’t see any of the sale proceeds, due to sanctions from Ottawa related to the civil war in Libya. “We are precluded from doing any business with Joint Oil until such sanctions are removed,” Schanck said.
