Pearl Exploration and Production Ltd. reports that it has achieved an exit production rate of over 12,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the last week of December 2007. This achievement represents an increase of 55% over the year end exit rate of 2006 and is the result of a focused and committed strategy to create one of North America’s premier heavy oil companies, taking advantage of a much overlooked opportunity in the oil and gas industry. The Company will continue to aggressively grow and upgrade its heavy oil resources, carving out a unique, innovative and highly attractive position for itself in the oil and gas sector.
The Company also announces that it has received board approval for a 2008 capital budget of $61 million. The Company’s intention is to focus a significant portion of this budget on resource conversion activities, including the continued work on the steam pilots in San Miguel, Texas, Onion Lake, Saskatchewan and the Blackrod project in the Athabasca region of Alberta. The Company will also be initiating studies to examine options for upgrading and/or refining technologies on its core properties to increase per barrel netback economics. In addition, in order to dedicate more capital and intellectual resources to core properties, the Company has determined that it will investigate the rationalization of certain non-core assets situated in Saskatchewan and Southern Alberta. Upon completion of the rationalization efforts, the Company will provide production guidance for 2008.
Pearl President and CEO Keith Hill commented “We are very committed to our principal strategy of building shareholder value through the acquisition of large scale heavy oil resources and converting them into reserves. We continue to believe that heavy oil will occupy a much greater position in the world energy market and plan to position ourselves to take advantage of this eventuality. Therefore in the near term we intend to focus the majority of our efforts on our core properties in both Canada and the United States with less emphasis on continued production growth and a greater emphasis on advancing steam pilot projects designed to convert our captured large scale resources into proven and probable reserves. We will also pursue various options designed to increase per barrel profitability including various types of unconventional upgrading and low tech refining applications.”