civ

This popped into my head last night so just wondering what others thought.

I invest in both Afren and RIA and was thinking about developments with Afren last night. They are reportedly interested in purchasing one of the blocks currently being auctioned by Shell in Nigeria which will bring with it a fair amount of work to bring the production facilities back on line and explore, appraise and develop the remaining parts of the blocks. Add to that work programme completion of Ebok (including further appraisal and development), appraisal / development of Okwok, OML115 and their other Nigerian assets (including the recently purchased from Shell OML 26).

Then consider the possibilities that they have open to them in East Africa and the exploration work required over there and you can identify their CIV assets (in particular CI-01) potentially being downgraded.

This I think presents an opportunity for RIA, to acquire all of part of CI-01 and hopefully become operator. It comes (like CI-202) with proven dicsoveries and there is one prospect that appears to overlap the 2 licences. I think it would be an excellent fit as development could occur continuously across the 2 blocks to bring al discoveries on stream. It would also provide better financial sense as to what the best way to market is, especially for the gas. It may be better for this to be piped to a processing plant and developed into gas products that sell at higher margins, a similar way that Afren currently operate the Lion Gas Plant.

Just a thought.