British exploration and production firm Sterling Energy announced on Friday that it’s exploration director Andrew Grosse has resigned.
The company, which has assets in the Middle East and Africa, said Grosse had resigned to pursue other opportunities and it will now start the process of seeking his successor.
Sterling has had a patchy 2011, seeing it’s share price on London’s Alternative Investment Market plumment over 54% to date on the back of poor exploration outcomes.
Sterling’s CEO Angus MacAskill said today: “I would like to thank Andrew for his contribution during his time with Sterling, particularly during the very challenging operation to drill the Sangaw North well”.
The Sangaw North-1 well, located in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, proved to be a dud for Sterling, and has been plugged and abandoned.
The firm added that the current exploration phase of its production sharing contract for the Sangaw North area was due to expire in November and its joint venture partnersmay elect to enter the next exploration phase, which runs until November 2013.
On 22 July Sterling’s chairman, Alastair Beardsall, pointed out that with the Sangaw North-1 exploration well in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the company had had the opportunity to test a very large upside potential with limited exposure to costs and that “the risk of unsuccessful wells is inherent in oil and gas production”.
He added that Sterling still held material interests in world-class exploration assets in two emerging areas in Africa.
In West Africa it has a 100 per cent working interest and operatorship of the Ntem offshore block, in which the company has identified four large deepwater prospects each of which is estimated to contain prospective resources of several hundred million barrels.
