Otto is led by Parks, a petroleum engineer and former technical director of geoscience and engineering for RPS Energy, and chief operating officer Craig Martin, a 20-year veteran who has worked for majors such as Santos and OMV, as well as mid-cap Coogee Resources and junior Nido Petroleum.
The company was founded by Jaap Poll, an experienced petroleum executive previously in senior exploration and management roles with Shell and Woodside Petroleum, and a former managing director of Oil Search, who still serves as a director, and is chaired by Paladin Resources chairman Rick Crabb.
Otto plans to achieve onshore gas production from one of its three licences in Turkey before the end of the year, followed by offshore production in the Philippines in early 2008, while drilling and evaluating much bigger plays in the Philippines and Argentina.
“We have the management, the assets and the opportunities,” Parks said.
The company has spent money acquiring new seismic and reinterpreting old data, and it has eight ready-to-drill prospects and more than 35 leads in a well balanced portfolio that includes onshore and offshore, oil and gas, and development and exploration assets, according to Parks.
“We’re underpinning frontier exploration with development projects,” he says.
These development projects include three Turkish gas discoveries made by Otto and its partners in their Edirne block. Otto is expecting first gas production from this licence next year.
The company also expects to have near-term production from its Calauit oil field in one of its three Philippines licences.
Calauit has proven and probable (2P) reserves of 6.6MMbbl of recoverable oil with another 5.4MMbbl upside, and Parks expects the field to come onstream in the fourth quarter of next year at 12-15,000 barrels a day at a capital cost of about $26 million.
Given current reserves, Calauit has a two- to five-year life and Otto expects it to generate total revenue of $436 million, based on a $US60/bbl oil price.
Otto’s other Philippines blocks offer much bigger prizes.
The company’s SC 51 permit holds Otto’s major near-term exploration upside, Parks said.
Its Cabilao and Argao prospects have a combined 2P potential of more than 200MMbbl recoverable, Otto says.
These and other prospects also have gas potential, and the local market, the province of Cebu, is hungry for gas.
But the highest-impact – and most difficult – block in the company’s portfolio is SC 55, in the SW Palawan Basin, which contains the 100 square kilometres Marantao structure, which could hold up to 1.1 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 3.6 trillion cubic feet of gas.
But Marantao lies in about 1900m of water, so drilling this prospect will require the resources of a major or supermajor.
Otto is processing 2D and 3D seismic shot this year in all of its Philippines blocks and aims to seek farminees in the first half of next year.
With high (80-99 percent) equity in all three Philippines block, Otto can farm-out large stakes while still maintaining material positions for itself, Parks said.
Otto also has a permit application in the grossly underexplored eastern sector of Argentina’s Cuyana Basin and is expecting award of the licence within weeks.
This acreage contains the Santa Rosa Dome, a structure that potentially contains up to 1 billion barrels of oil in place and can be drilled for less than US$1 million per well, Parks said.
If the structure was filled to spill, about 200MMbbl was likely to be recoverable, he said.
