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Question 7/21
From: Martin Wills, Head Geologist
To: William Seaton, Director of Finance
Subject: Reserves
Hi William,
I have reviewed the situation with respect to our "probable" or "2P" reserves, as disclosed in our latest annual report. I am sorry to say that we have to downgrade our figures with respect to reserves. I am recommending that all extraction activities cease for the foreseeable future on the North Atlantic and South Atlantic fields and that the proved reserves be downgraded from proved to probable.
I have to stress that this is not attributable to any past error on the part of the geologists. The world oil price has been depressed and the discovery of large deposits of shale oil in the USA suggests that the oil price will not recover for some time. That means that some oil wells that were commercially viable this time last year are no longer worth processing.
The oil remains under the rock and I have no doubt that we will restore operations in the long term.
We are by no means the only oil company to have been forced to take this action.
The one piece of good news is that the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2014 have already been published. My understanding is that we do not have to withdraw them, so unless you put an advertisement in the press, we can carry on quietly trying to sort this mess out.
I have my best people working on ways to extract oil from our wells more efficiently, so we may be able to increase production over the next year or so.
Martin
To: William Seaton, Director of Finance
Subject: Reserves
Hi William,
I have reviewed the situation with respect to our "probable" or "2P" reserves, as disclosed in our latest annual report. I am sorry to say that we have to downgrade our figures with respect to reserves. I am recommending that all extraction activities cease for the foreseeable future on the North Atlantic and South Atlantic fields and that the proved reserves be downgraded from proved to probable.
I have to stress that this is not attributable to any past error on the part of the geologists. The world oil price has been depressed and the discovery of large deposits of shale oil in the USA suggests that the oil price will not recover for some time. That means that some oil wells that were commercially viable this time last year are no longer worth processing.
The oil remains under the rock and I have no doubt that we will restore operations in the long term.
We are by no means the only oil company to have been forced to take this action.
The one piece of good news is that the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2014 have already been published. My understanding is that we do not have to withdraw them, so unless you put an advertisement in the press, we can carry on quietly trying to sort this mess out.
I have my best people working on ways to extract oil from our wells more efficiently, so we may be able to increase production over the next year or so.
Martin
