Austral Pacific Announces Cheal Oil Production Station Complete
September 21 2007 - 1:12AM
PR Newswire (US)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Austral
Pacific Energy Ltd. (TSX-V: APX; NZSX: APX; Amex: AEN) -- Tag Oil
Ltd (TSX-V: TAO; OTC Bulletin Board: TAGOF) Austral Pacific Energy
Ltd. is pleased to announce that the Cheal Production Station is
now online and exporting hydrocarbons to market. Plans are now
underway for the formal commissioning of the Production Station on
Monday 8 October. The opening ceremony will be presided over by New
Zealand's Associate Minister for Energy, Harry Duynhoven.
Commenting on the completion of the Production Station, Austral CEO
and President Thompson Jewell said, "We are very pleased to have
reached this point; the construction of the production station has
been a long, and sometimes trying, process and we wanted to make
sure that we had everything in place before talking to our
shareholders at our recent shareholder briefing in Wellington. We
were able to announce then that we were looking forward to showing
guests around the Production Station and helping us formally
commission the plant in early October. We are all very pleased to
be able to produce hydrocarbons using our own equipment, and we can
be justly proud of the achievements of our dedicated team. Now we
can focus on using Cheal as a platform for other developments."
Since the pre-commissioning test phase began on August 10, 2007,
the "state of the art" oil and gas production facility has been
fully certified, and has processed some 14,000 barrels of oil and
5.9 million scf (standard cubic feet) of gas from the "A" site
wells. Production rates have been ramped up and down according to
planned well-testing protocols. The field (both A and B wells) is
currently reduced to around 600 barrels of oil and 580,000 scf
(standard cubic feet) of gas per day while optimization work is
undertaken on one of the "A" site wells. The field has produced
some 212,000 barrels of oil and 185 million scf of gas in total
since test production began. Cheal is a producing oil and gas field
south of Stratford in onshore Taranaki, New Zealand. It is 69.5%
owned by Austral, which is also field operator. The field comprises
four active wells, with two more in an advanced planning phase, and
contains 2.6 MMbbl of independently certified oil reserves (2P) and
around 1.8 bcf of associated gas. Austral has put in place all
relevant oil, gas and LPG sales contracts for the Cheal output. In
other news, on September 14, 2007, in accordance with the company's
incentive remuneration policy, 705,000 share options were granted
to all current staff and directors. The options were granted in
recognition of and to incentivise staff efforts in successfully
moving the company into a new era as an oil and gas exploration and
production company. The exercise price of these options is a five
day volume weighted average of US$1.20. A further 60,000 options
were granted to Mr. Bernie Zinkhofer upon his appointment as a
director, the exercise price of which is the closing price on the
date of grant, being $1.23. All options granted are exercisable for
5 years, and vest in three equal tranches over 18 or 24 months.
None of the Exchanges upon which Austral Pacific's securities trade
have approved or disapproved the contents hereof. This release
includes certain statements that may be deemed to be
"forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable
legislation. Other than statements of historical fact, all
statements in this release addressing future production, reserve
potential, exploration and development activities and other
contingencies are forward-looking statements. Although management
believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking
statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are
not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or
developments may differ materially from those in the
forward-looking statements, due to factors such as market prices,
exploration and development successes, continued availability of
capital and financing, and general economic, market, political or
business conditions. See our public filings at
http://www.sedar.com/ and
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm for further
information. Austral Pacific Energy (NZ) Limited Web site:
http://www.austral-pacific.com/ Email: Phone: Thom Jewell, CEO +64
(4) 495 0880 DATASOURCE: Austral Pacific Energy Ltd. CONTACT: Thom
Jewell, CEO of Austral Pacific Energy Ltd., +64 (4) 495 0880, Web
site: http://www.austral-pacific.com/
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