UK firm Wesmount buys up more shares in Canje Block owner

Jan 20, 2021 News

– Bulletwood-1 drilling results expected next month

Kaieteur News – United Kingdom investment firm, Westmount Energy Limited, on Monday announced yet another purchase of shares in the Canje Block owner, JHI Associates. ExxonMobil, the Canje operator, is currently drilling at the Bulletwood-1 well, where results are expected in February.
“The Board of Westmount is pleased to announce that it has purchased 287,500 common shares in JHI Associates Inc. at an aggregate cost of CAD$718,750.” The firm said in a statement. “The purchase of the 287,500 common shares in JHI has completed [sic] on 15 January, 2021.”
Westmount now has 5,651,270 shares in JHI, it revealed, or about 7.7 percent of the issued common shares in JHI as of November 13, 2019. Westmount’s holdings in JHI account for approximately 90 percent of the value of its gross assets.
“Drilling operations at the first well in the Canje drilling campaign, Bulletwood-1, are ongoing since the start of the year with completion of the well anticipated around mid to late February,” Westmount noted in the same release.
The owners of the block expect a discovery of 500 million barrels of oil in Bulletwood-1. Moreover, Exxon expects to find 10 billion barrels of oil in all of the prospects it has identified in the block, which amount to just over a dozen.
Westmount expects there to be follow-up drilling the Canje Block in the first half of 2021. The next prospects in the block are Jabillo and Sapote.
The UK firm has been buying up shares in several companies operating offshore Guyana, with the previous purchase occurring last month, also of shares in JHI Associates. It owns shares in four companies with interests in blocks offshore Guyana. Westmount touts that the Canje block is located adjacent to the Stabroek block, which has yielded 18 commercial discoveries since 2015 of about nine billion oil-equivalent barrels, and is in the same geologic basin.
Westmount owns shares in JHI Associates, which has a 17.5 percent stake in the Canje block, Eco-Atlantic Oil & Gas Limited that has a 15 percent stake in the Orinduik Block, as well as Cataleya Energy Corporation and Ratio Petroleum, which each have a 25 percent stake in the Kaieteur block.
JHI had participated in the suspicious handling of the Canje block, following its award to a local company with no experience or money, Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas, in March 2015. This was just days before the 2015 elections. Mid-Atlantic and JHI planned to control the block even before it was awarded.
Together, the two companies sold interests in the block to ExxonMobil and Total SA without doing any work. JHI was a key player in setting the stage for secrecy as the two companies handled the Canje block licence, because of its incorporation in the British Virgin Islands – a secrecy jurisdiction and tax haven.
As a result of the 2018 farm-out to Total, JHI is carried for the drilling of up to four wells and is funded for the drilling of additional wells.

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