Challenger Energy is a Caribbean and Atlantic margin focused oil and gas company, with a range of petroleum assets located onshore in Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname, and offshore in the waters of The Bahamas and Uruguay.

Challenger Energy’s portfolio of opportunities represents a mix ranging from valuable production assets in Trinidad and Tobago, near-term appraisal and development projects in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, and high impact exploration assets located in The Bahamas, Uruguay and Trinidad and Tobago.

OVERVIEW OF OPERATIONS

Uruguay

Challenger Energy holds two offshore licences in Uruguay, totally 19,000km², making it the 3rd largest of acreage holder offshore. The area is now fully licenced, and Challenger is the only junior.

Challenger Energy has a 40% non-operating interest in AREA OFF-1 after entering into a farm-out agreement with Chevron (pending approvals) and is the 100% holder of the AREA OFF-3 licence. Uruguay is widely recognised as the premier Latin-American County for business, with an excellent-social and political system, well-functioning democracy, reliable legal system and educated and skilled workforce. Uruguay is a leader in providing reliable, sustainable and affordable energy and thus promotes the responsible development of the nation’s energy mix. Recent conjugate margin discoveries offshore Southwest Africa have renewed the interest in the types of plays present in Uruguay. In particular, the data and enhanced technical understanding provided from recent discoveries offshore Namibia provides greater cofidence that there might be potential for a new, prolific petroleum system in the Uruguay offshore, including CEG’s blocks. This has accelerated the licencing, seismic acquisition and drilling across the region region.nfidence that there might be potential for a new, prolific petroleum system in the Uruguay offshore, including CEG’s blocks. This has accelerated the licencing, seismic acquisition and drilling across the region.

Farm-out
In March 2024, CEG's wholly-owned Uruguayan subsidiary, CEG Uruguay entered into a farm-out agreement with Chevron Uruguay Exploration related to a 60% interest in the AREA OFF-1 block, offshore Uruguay

CEG were awarded the AREA OFF-1 licence block offshore Uruguay in 2020, but as at the start of 2022, Uruguay was not yet on the global industry’s radar, and Challenger Energy was Uruguay’s sole licence holder. Starting in early 2022, however, everything changed quite dramatically, and very quickly.

The catalyst for this was when two energy majors (TotalEnergies and Shell) each announced in February 2022 that they had made massive discoveries from independent wells drilled offshore Namibia. Those successful Namibian wells served to greatly de-risk the presence of a high-quality, oil-prone source rock and charge, not just in Namibia but on the other side of the South Atlantic conjugate margin – in particular Uruguay, which represents a geological “mirror” of the area where the new Namibian discoveries were made.

As a result Uruguay become a global exploration “hotspot.” Thus, in the first Uruguayan bidding round after the Namibian discoveries (May 2022), three licences were bid on and awarded to majors Shell and APA (formerly Apache). Then, in November 2022, a further two licences were bid on and awarded, one to a consortium of Shell and APA, and the other to YPF, the Argentinian national oil company. The new entrants offered significant work program to secure their licences (as compared to the very modest work program CEG had bid to secure AREA OFF-1), and a number of other energy majors also registered to bid in the two Uruguayan open rounds held in 2022, but were unsuccessful.

Trinidad and Tobago

Challenger Energy is the operator of three producing fields, and holds two non active fields, all onshore Trinidad. 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, reperforations, reactivations and repairs to shut-in wells, as and when appropriate. In addition, in June 2023, the Company was nominated as the party with whom the Trinidadian Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries (‘MEEI’) should negotiate the award of Guayaguayare, a precursor step to formal award of the licence.

Goudron
Challenger Energy owns and operates 100% of the Goudron field by way of an enhanced production service contract (“EPSC”) with Heritage Petroleum, the Trinidadian state-owned oil and gas company. The current term of the EPSC runs until 30 June 2030.

Inniss-Trinity
Challenger owns and operates 100% of the Inniss-Trinity field by way of an incremental production service contract (“IPSC”) with Heritage. The current term of the IPSC runs until 30 September 2031.

SWP
The SWP contains the Icacos producing oilfields and the Perseverance and Columbia nonproducing fields, in which Challenger Energy Group holds a 100% operated interest via a number of private leases covering the Bonasse, Cedros and Icacos licence areas.

Guayaguayare
In June 0223 Challenger was advised by MEEI that the Government of Trinidad has authorised MEEI to enter negotiations with Challenger for the grant of an Exploration and Production (Public Petroleum Licence) for the Guayaguayare block, following a bid for that licence by Challenger as part of the 2022 Onshore and Nearshore Competitive Bid Round. Grant of the licence presently remains subject to negotiation of licence terms with MEEI.

The Bahamas

Challenger Energy Group is the 100% holder of four conjoined exploration licences offshore The Bahamas. The Perserverance-1 well was drilled in the licence area in early 2021, and did not result in a commercial discovery at the drill location. However, a number of other structures and drill targets remain prospective across the licence areas, and the technical findings from Perseverance-1 indicate the potential of deeper Jurassic horizons.

In March 2021, CEG notified the Government of The Bahamas of its intent to renew the licences into a third 3-year exploration period- this renewal remains pending, and the Group is engaging with the Government on the renewal process. At the same time, CEG is engaging with the Government and various third-party consultants on a joint initiative seeking to monetise the asset via an alternative approach based around carbon credits.

Leadership

Iain McKendrick Non-Executive Chairman
Eytan Uliel Chief Executive Officer
Gagan Khurana Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Financial Officer
Randy Hiscock Business Development Director and Managing Director- Uruguay
Owen Baboolal Trinidad and Tobago Country Manager
Vishan Beharry Drilling & Completions Manager
Benjamin Proffitt Company Secretary

Location

Head Office
The Engine House. Alexandra Road, Castletown, Isle of Man, IM9 1TG
Tel: +44 (0) 1624 647883   l   Fax: +44 (0) 1624 665121   l   Email: info@cegplc.com

KeyFacts Energy: Challenger Energy Uruguay country profile   l   Challenger Energy Trinidad and Tobago country profile