New PEARL in SE Asian oil business

High oil prices have stimulated new investor enthusiasm for petroleum development in Southeast Asia, judging by the stock market success of start-up exploration and production company, PEARL Energy….

Lorentz, PEARL’s Business Development Manager, says the company believes there is great opportunity for independent oil companies to build a good business in Southeast Asia. “There is a dogma or conventional wisdom in the industry that there will be no more big-hit discoveries in Southeast Asia,” he says. “These sorts of discoveries are now being made, say, in offshore West Africa. So the industry, like lemmings, is going to West Africa. We don’t see it that way.”

As large oil companies increasingly channel their resources away from proven oil and gas provinces of Southeast Asia to newer deepwater regions elsewhere in the world, there is an opportunity for PEARL to secure a niche in development and production of medium-sized fields in Southeast Asia. Supporting PEARL’s judgment is its early upstream success. At the time of listing, the company had made five discoveries from nine exploration wells it had drilled, compared with the global industry average of 1 in 10.

Asia Times