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| Bankers Petroleum Ltd.: A 'Good Team' |
| By Fernie Grace Tiflis | |||
| Friday, 29 February 2008 | |||
 The best way to survive in the oil and gas industry is to ‘assemble a good team and do the best you can,’ President Wolf Regener says.
When the company entered Albania in 2004, the wells that Bankers took over in the oilfield were producing 600 barrels a day. Today, it has increased to over 5,000 barrels, with hopes to produce in excess of 10,000 barrels a day by 2010. Started two years ago, Banker's U.S. operations have acquired 375,000 acres of oil and gas leases, including acreage in the Palo Duro basin in the Texas panhandle, Ardmore and Arkoma basins in Oklahoma, Black Warrior basin in Mississippi and Alabama and the Appalachian basin in New York. What makes Bankers different from its competition, U.S. Division President Wolf Regener says, is its focus on opportunities in unconventional petroleum assets. "We decided to go after unconventional oil and gas when other people were mainly focusing on conventional, so we could hopefully pick up assets for less money," he says. "In Albania, it is a heavier gravity crude, which has yielded good results for us once we applied a new strategy and technology to the field. In the United States, we focus on unconventional natural gas and we were one of the earlier companies to begin exploring in that area. The number of companies interested in unconventional gas has grown considerably since we started and so has the knowledge base." Sole Focus Bankers is focused on selling oil to the state-run refinery in Albania, as well as exporting it to Italian refineries. In the United States, the company often sells its natural gas and crude oil to the closest pipeline and refinery with the best pricing, "In our U.S. Division, we are currently only focusing on projects that we already have under lease," Regener explains. "We do this by proceeding in a methodical, scientific fashion until we have success in a project. We can [then] do it again and again to fully develop a property. Once you get them to work, much of the risk is taken out of it. It's a repeatable-type process to get the oil and gas out of the ground, and in Albania for instance it has increased our production because we already know what we're doing and how to do it." Regener says each of Bankers' U.S. assets is unique: each shale needs to be treated slightly differently to extract the gas, and not all of them will work economically. One of its projects is Woodford shale in the Ardmore basin in Oklahoma. So far, Bankers has drilled four horizontal wells and one vertical well. "It is heading into the developmental-type mode, and has now changed from exploration into how we can improve productivity in each well," Regener says. Of its U.S. projects, the Woodward shale is "the farthest one along and has a huge amount of potential value for Bankers." The company started selling gas from this basin during the year's third quarter. "We're very pleased with the progress we've achieved," he adds. "The Woodford shale looks to be proving itself to be a significant play for the company, generating good exploration results from the first two horizontal wells drilled on our acreage. Our success has led to us reaching an important milestone in our U.S. exploration strategy: our first natural gas production and sales." Bankers says it will continue to define the potential of its Palo Duro basin. "We're looking at ways to increase the amount of hydrocarbons we can get out," Regener explains. "In Albania, we have started to access the further potential of the reservoir through enhanced recovery techniques. This will entail applying different technologies to extract the oil to hopefully create more value for the company." For instance, in some parts of the reservoir in Albania Bankers will likely be injecting steam to thin out the heavy oil, which, in many reservoirs around the world, increases the percentage of oil you can recover as well as the rates that the wells produce. Weathering Challenges Funding early stages of exploration can be a challenge. "It takes a lot of capital to do what we do," Regener says. "You have to have good projects and a good team to attract the capital. At` Bankers, we have this as well as being able to leverage off being a publicly traded company, which helps us obtain the resources we need." Putting a good team together can be difficult. "As we expand, we have to keep finding employees," he says. "We're fortunate to have good, talented people that are hard to find otherwise." Regener adds that Bankers offers benefits and stock options to help attract and retain employees. "For a small company, stock options are worth a lot when projects are successful," he continues. Regener says his 20 years in the industry have taught him "you just do the best you can - many things are out of your control, such as pricing." He adds that the market has changed drastically. "Twenty years ago, natural gas was selling for less than $1.70 per thousand cubic feet, and for the first 8 months of 2007 its averaged $6.50 per thousand cubic feet," he states. "It was really hard to make money when I started. Now, the challenge is to find good projects." Bankers maintains a technical staff to review potential projects and come up with ideas to drill new wells, Regener says. "Now, we're OK, because we have so much acreage across the United States, but if some of them don't work, or we sell things off, then we'll have to look again," he explains. Continued Growth Regener says he is proud of his people and projects. "Without our people, we can't execute our projects," he notes. "We assembled good people and we put a good team together." He says Bankers expects to grow dramatically over the next year. "We see some substantial growth potential for the company from both Albania and the U.S.," Regener states. "While continuing to grow production from primary extraction techniques in Albania, we want to further explore secondary and enhanced oil recovery technology to develop more reserves from the oilfield. In the United States, we want to see substantial production from some of our shale properties, specifically Oklahoma which is moving into the development phase." |
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