CANADIAN OILPATCH / NEW ENTITY
COMPANY TO WATCH
Found the following article which may be of interest to some of you. Former energy minister hunting for oil
After three years in relative obscurity, former Alberta Energy Minister Rick Orman is resurfacing with a high-risk exploration oil venture in the Middle East nation of Yemen.
Orman, with backing from some of the veteran stars in Canada's oil industry, is heading a company called KAPPA ENERGY COMPANY and he hopes to repeat the spectacular Yemen success of Calgary's Canadian Occidental Petroleum Ltd.
Kappa's shares start trading today on the Alberta Stock Exchange after it completed a reverse takeover of Keltey Energy Ltd., a company with just one small natural gas asset.
Orman wouldn't guess what the shares will trade at, but the company recently completed a private placement at $1.35 a share to an institutional investor.
Kappa plans to redrill an uneconomic oil discovery on a 750,000-acre block in Yemen. The find was one of four wells drilled by Crescent PetroleumCo., a private company from the United Arab Emirates. But the best well was not believed to be economic by Crescent.
In 1993, Orman parlayed his political credentials by getting into the international deal stream and cut a deal with Crescent to take another shot at its Block 2.
Orman recruited a geological team from Canadian Occidental, a company that found more than 500 million barrels in 1993 on the Masila block to the east of Kappa's concession.
Kappa's prospects, including a formation called Qishn sand that Crescent drilled past, are believed to be very similar to Canadian Occidental's winners.
"We believe Crescent Petroleum bypassed a Qishn discovery," said Orman, who concedes that his political career helped land this opportunity.
"The fact that I was a former energy minister held me in good stead," when meeting President Ali Abdulla Saleh of Yemen.
But Orman says "Kappa is not going to live or die in Yemen."
His company is working up other prospects, both producing fields and properties that need redevelopment, in Eqypt, Syria, East Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.
Kappa's founding shareholders include Calgary oil legends, Daryl (doc) Seaman, Byron Seaman and Donald Seaman, the builders of Bow Valley Energy Ltd., Angus Mackenzie, former chairman of Sceptre Resources Ltd. and a veteran of international ventures, Michael Kanovsky, co-founder of Northstar Energy Corp., and former Nova Scotia Premier Gerald Regan. |
