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Xcite Energy At the end of June, Xcite signed a $155 million 5 year reserves based loan (RBL) facility for the phase 1b stage development of the North Sea Bentley field with Royal Bank of Scotland, Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Bank, GE unit GE Energy Financial Services, Nedbank Limited and Britannic Strategies Limited (a subsidiary of BP plc). The RBL deal follows a $50 million deal for unsecured Loan Notes with West Face Capital Inc., a Canada-based investment management firm and private placement of 30,000,000 units (shares plus warrants) with Global Resource Funding Partners LLC, based in Boston Massachusetts. In addition, an agreement was announced in mid June with BP Oil International to provide $5 million of financing and reduce working capital requirements for the diluent products to be used in the blending-in-field operations. At current oil prices, this working capital support is estimated to be in the range of US$20 million to US$40 million.
The Company also announced last week that that the pre-production flow test on the Bentley 9/3b-7 well using the Rowan Norway rig was progressing without any hiccups, with the planned shut-in period and pressure build-up test having been commenced on 11 July following the initial, successful, clean-up and first oil flow on 9 July. This planned shut-in period and pressure build-up test is designed to obtain key information about the Bentley reservoir and the mobility of its fluids for use in interpreting the subsequent flow data and for planning the next step of the Bentley field development. Following this build-up test, the flow test will continue as planned. The Scott Spirit tanker is currently hooked up to the Rowan Norway rig with a view to collecting at least 45,000 barrels of oil during the extended well test. Further updates from Bentley on the well test are expected through July and August.
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