Preda­tor Oil & Gas Hold­ings’ planned ac­qui­si­tions of Chal­lenger En­er­gy Group’s (CEG) op­er­a­tions in T&T has hit a de­lay.

Preda­tor has ex­pe­ri­enced some short term-de­lays in its ac­qui­si­tion of Chal­lenger En­er­gy Group’s (CEG) op­er­a­tions in T&T.

Preda­tor, a UK-based oil and gas com­pa­ny with hy­dro­car­bon op­er­a­tions and pro­duc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties fo­cused in Mo­roc­co and Trinidad, en­tered in­to an agree­ment for the ac­qui­si­tion of all of the Chal­lenger En­er­gy Group’s T&T’s op­er­a­tions in Feb­ru­ary 2025.

In a news re­lease, the agree­ment pro­vid­ed for the reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval nec­es­sary for clos­ing of the sale to be fi­nalised by April 30, 2025. This date was ex­tend­ed to June 30, 2025, due to un­cer­tain­ty caused by the gen­er­al elec­tion called in T&T in mid-March and the re­sult­ing change in Gov­ern­ment on April 28, 2025.

“In an­tic­i­pa­tion of com­ple­tion in the near term, the com­pa­nies have com­menced work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly on the ground in Trinidad, so as to en­sure a smooth and ef­fi­cient trans­fer of own­er­ship and op­er­a­tions once fi­nal reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval is ob­tained,” the news re­lease stat­ed.

CEG op­er­a­tions in Trinidad in­clude three on­shore pro­duc­ing fields—Goudron, In­nis-Trin­i­ty, Ica­cos. Across these fields there are a to­tal 250 wells, of which ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 are in pro­duc­tion at any giv­en time. With­in the fields, reg­u­lar well workover op­er­a­tions are un­der­tak­en on the ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion well stock, in­clud­ing well stim­u­la­tion op­er­a­tions, re per­fo­ra­tions, re­ac­ti­va­tions and re­pairs to shut-in wells, as and when ap­pro­pri­ate.

Paul Grif­fiths, chief ex­ec­u­tive of Preda­tor Oil & Gas Hold­ings said, “Over the last two months we have been car­ry­ing out an in­ter­nal tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial re-as­sess­ment of the com­pa­ny’s di­verse port­fo­lio of as­sets in Mo­roc­co and Trinidad. This has tak­en in­to ac­count pre­vail­ing un­cer­tain­ty in terms of eq­ui­ty mar­ket volatil­i­ty, crude oil price fluc­tu­a­tions and un­sta­ble for­eign ex­change mar­kets.

“All of these fac­tors com­bine to un­der-val­ue ear­ly stage oil and gas ex­plo­ration, ap­praisal and de­vel­op­ment.

“Fol­low­ing this re­view the com­pa­ny is fo­cused go­ing for­ward on pre­serv­ing its cash; main­tain its debt-free sta­tus; in­creas­ing its port­fo­lio of pro­duc­ing as­sets in Trinidad; fi­nanc­ing and mon­etis­ing its near-term oil and gas de­vel­op­ment projects at min­i­mal cost to the com­pa­ny; and main­tain­ing third par­ty-fund­ed fu­ture ‘blue sky’ ex­plo­ration po­ten­tial for gas and he­li­um.”

Preda­tor is of the view that the ac­qui­si­tion of the CEG op­er­a­tions in Trinidad will fa­cil­i­tate pro­duc­tion growth and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion through in­te­gra­tion with our ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tions to de­liv­er economies of scale, the com­pa­ny said.