Tullow Oil said yesterday it had secured £1.43billion in reserve-backed loans to replace existing debt and to fund future capital commitments, including development of its world-class Jubilee discovery offshore Ghana.
The UK oil and gas operator has agreed a £1.275billion senior facility with a banking syndicate including Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, and Lloyds TSB among others.
It has also agreed a further £155million of junior facilities.
Chief financial officer Ian Springett said: “These new debt arrangements represent a major milestone in the development of Tullow’s financial capability.
“To put in place debt arrangements of this scale, particularly in the current credit environment, is a tremendous achievement.
“This demonstrates the quality of Tullow’s assets as well as the strength of our banking relationships.
“Combined with our equity placing in January, we are strongly positioned to pursue our current investment plans and longer-term growth strategy.”
Tullow also said yesterday it had made a significant discovery offshore Ghana, sending its shares up 7.89% to 793p, having earlier traded as high as 833p. The operator of the Deepwater Tano licence in which the latest find was made, said the Tweneboa-1 well had encountered a “significant highly pressured light hydrocarbon accumulation”.
It said the well had found 68.88 feet of net pay, and it was being deepened to further assess the discovery and to test a potentially deeper structure Tullow exploration director Angus McCoss was in no doubt that the find was another material discovery for the company.
He said: “Tweneboa is another outstanding discovery offshore Ghana which maintains our 100% success rate in the region.
“Substantial upside has been identified and a material appraisal programme will follow. This result has the potential to deliver yet another transformational growth step for Tullow.”
Tullow (49.95%) operates the Deepwater Tano licence and its partners are Kosmos Energy (18%), Anadarko Petroleum (18%), Sabre Oil and Gas (4.05%) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (10% carried interest).