Rex International plans to take part in drilling of 10 wells this year

REX International, a Catalist-listed oil exploratory firm, is planning to participate in the drilling of about 10 wells this year in the core areas of Norway, Oman and Trinidad, and focus on proving more oil in its own assets for further technology validation.

In an operational update released on Monday, group chief executive Måns Lidgren said that Rex is in a strong position to participate in the drilling of about 10 wells in those areas to take advantage of the lower cost of drilling services amid weakened oil prices.

"While the company's current limited oil production levels also means that it is less affected by falling Brent and WTI (West Texas Intermediate) oil prices, we will be prudent with our capital expenditure for drilling activities and are very selective when committing to projects," he noted.

"Our basic monetisation strategy, barring other business considerations, remains to sell oil-in-the-ground, upon a declaration of discovery at the best possible price, especially in matured markets such as Norway," he added.

With more validation of its proprietary Rex Virtual Drilling (RVD) technology through more proving of oil in its own assets, Rex hopes that this will grow the clientele base for its technology arm Rex Technology Management Ltd (RTM) and build up its own portfolio of concessions.

The group has screened about 200 opportunities with RVD last year and expects to look at a similar number of opportunities this year, Mr Lidgren said. RTM is developing a second-generation version of RVD with improved depth resolution in the analysis of seismic data.