Shares in Trinidad-focused oil firm Bayfield Energy rose nearly eight per cent yesterday on the London Stock Exchange yesterday after the company announced that it had renegotiated its contract with state-owned Petrotrin. According to a report on the ProActive Investors Web site, Bayfield Energy said output from the Trintes field is to be benchmarked against the higher value Brent price rather than West Texas Intermediate, after it re-negotiated its contract. In a statement yesterday, Bayfield said it first entered into a contract for the sale of its crude oil with Petrotrin in April 2009, which set the sales price at a 17.5 per cent discount to the published price for West Texas Intermediate ("WTI") crude, a commonly used marker for crude sales in the Caribbean market.
Bayfield said: "The discount of 17.5% reflected the low volumes produced by Bayfield at that time of around 600 barrels of oil per day (bopd). The negotiations leading to the revised contract terms have recognised that developments in crude markets have resulted in a situation where the use of WTI as a reference price no longer fairly reflects the market value of Bayfield's crude and also acknowledged significant increases in production from the Trintes field." Accordingly, Bayfield and Petrotrin "have agreed upon revised pricing terms for Bayfield's crude such that the sales contract will adopt Brent crude as the reference price and a revised discount of 9.5 per cent for a minimum period of 12 months. The revised terms are effective from August 1. Brent has been trading recently at a premium to WTI of around US$20.00 per barrel," according to the oil company's statement.
In a statement in July, the company said that the latest reported production rate from the Trintes field has now increased to over 2,300 bopd. Bayfield's chief executive, Hywel John, said: "It is encouraging to report on the success of our initiatives to improve cash flow and manage our financial commitments to enable us to establish a sound platform from which to continue our exploration programme." ProActive Investors quoted stockbroker Seymour Pierce noted that it had previously used a West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price of between US$75.7 and US$85.6 per barrel in its cash flow analysis of the firm. The new sales agreement in this long-awaited update using Brent equates to an additional 8.2 pence a share on its previous forecasts, it said in a note. Bayfield shares were up 7.83 per cent this afternoon, at 31 pence each.an upstream oil and gas exploration and production
Bayfield has interests offshore Trinidad and South Africa.