Small international oil companies eye London for float, says Jadestone chief exec months after listing

More small-cap oil and gas firms are likely to follow Jadestone Energy to choose London for a listing, its chief executive has said just months after it floated in the capital.

Paul Blakeley said that the London market is proving the most responsive for small international companies in the upstream space.

“I think the London community understands international upstream exploration and production really well and certainly that’s been our experience over the last year and hence listing on Aim was the most logical choice for us,” he told City PM

He was speaking after the Asia-Pacific focused oil company, which buys production-ready assets, said it expects production to fall at between 13,500 to 15,500 barrels per day in 2019. Production is expected to reach 30,000 barrels by 2023.

The company expects to shortly start drilling the first infill well, which speeds up recovery, in six years at its Australian site Stag.

Blakeley said the Asia-Pacific region is undergoing a similar development to the North Sea in the late 1990s when oil majors started to retreat from the basin as larger fields were slowly depleting.

“The sector is maturing with the supermajors naturally starting to retreat. And that’s just beginning now in Asia Pacific. It’s something that happened in the North Sea 20 years ago,” Blakeley said.

He added: “Asia Pacific is a region that is energy hungry … returns in upstream are as good as anywhere else in the world.”

“The fiscal terms are competitive and most of the countries want foreign investment and so the terms are set accordingly, secondly, it’s got a really well-developed infrastructure and the supply chain is efficient.”