Touchstone Exploration Inc. (LON:TXP) Chief Executive Officer Paul Baay caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss first quarter results, Coho pipeline, EIA approval and long term production at Royston.
Q1: Paul, you’ve announced Touchstone Exploration’s first quarter results. Could you just talk us through the highlights?
A1: I think the main highlights are the strong cash position that we’ve left ourselves in a quarter with just over $10 million of available cash to get us through our capital programme, through the remainder of this year. About $1.4 million of free cashflow for the first quarter and production volumes that were up almost 10% to about 1,400 barrels a day for the first quarter. That was the main highlights, it was a little bit of a quiet first quarter but a good one, nonetheless.
Q2: Now Coho pipeline is almost ready to go, is this still on track to come online by the end of the month?
A2: Yes, the Coho pipeline, it’s been a long time, I think you and I have talked about this for a long time, but it is finally weeks away. Likely the way we have it set up right now, right around the end of the month or the first couple of weeks in June. We just don’t know what we’ll encounter when we get to those final stages and putting it in production but literally, we’re weeks away now from first gas at Coho.
Q3: When are you expecting approval from the EIA and can you tell us any more information about the application?
A3: The EIA is moving along really well. We got a what they call an information request last week and we’ve just about done completing that, we’re submitting on Friday. Nothing really major, mainly typos and some clarification errors in our application, we’ll get that in on Friday and then we’ll get a response back from them.
Under the regulations, they’re supposed to be back to us by the 15th which is next week so I think realistically we’re probably a week/10 days away but that’s not going to delay the initial production date that we had for the end of September this year.
So everything’s right on track from this release.
Q4: Long term production at Royston, how’s that going?
A4: That test at Royston is coming to end, we’ve produced it and we’ve talked about that, that’s been on production for quite a while. We’re not going to shut it in, get a final build up on it and quite frankly, get the lease ready to move the rig back here in the next couple of months and do a side track of that well and go down and recomplete it so that we can really test that lower sheet, which I’ll call the intermediate sheet, and potentially the subthrust sheets.
So, the information we’ve got is great, we’ve got thousands of barrels of oil that we’ve sold over the period of time here and now it’s just time to get ready for the next operation on at Royston.
Touchstone Exploration Inc. is a Calgary, Alberta based company engaged in the business of acquiring interests in petroleum and natural gas rights and the exploration, development, production and sale of petroleum and natural gas.
