New World Oil & Gas boss eager to begin new phase

New World Oil & Gas ( LON:NEW ) boss Bill Kelleher says he is eager for the company to begin a new phase of it development, following the new cornerstone investment from Niels Petroleum.

The transformational funding deal, which provides up to US$50mln and was signed-off by shareholders last week, will help the firm create value.

Among other initiatives allows the group to now look at taking on additional opportunities.

In this morning’s interim results statement the company run the rule over a busy period – which included a drill programme that found evidence of a hydrocarbon system within its acreage in Belize but fell short of making a discovery.

Elsewhere it has completed a seismic exploration programmes on its acreage in Denmark.

“As the first half of 2013 has shown, there is no straight line route to building a multi-project exploration and production company,” said Kelleher, New World chairman and chief executive.

“While key milestones were met over the last six months, this has been a mixed period for New World.

“On the one hand, we fulfilled earn-in commitments at all three of our exploration projects so that New World has been assigned a 100% working interest in the Blue Creek project in Belize and a 25% interest in each of Danica Jutland and Danica Resources in Denmark.

“Importantly, as a result of our phased seismic acquisition and interpretation programme, a number of drill ready prospects have now been identified on all three projects, each with company-making volumetrics and economics.”

New World said that negotiations over possible farm-out deals, for both sets of assets, are ongoing.

It also confirmed today that all the current year expenses relating to the wells in Belize were written off in the second quarter.

The pre-revenue explorer reported a US$9.5mln loss for the six months to June 30.