Hibiscus Petroleum to Double Production

Malaysian oil and gas exploration and production company Hibiscus Petroleum is aiming to double its oil output in the United Kingdom and Malaysia to 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2021, a senior company executive said on Thursday.

It needs an additional $50 million by 2020 to boost production from about 10,000 bpd now, Kenneth Pereira, managing director of the company, told reporters.

"That's our maximum negative cashflow for projects already identified and that's based on a $60 per barrel oil scenario," he said.

"So at $70 per barrel oil, it will be something like $40 million."

The company, which develops small oil and gas fields in Asia, has two major producing assets.

One is the Anasuria Cluster in the North Sea in the United Kingdom. The other is in Malaysia, the 2011 North Sabah production sharing contract (PSC), which includes the Labuan crude oil terminal.

It also owns a discovery in Australia that has not produced first oil yet, Pereira said.

Hibiscus has a 10-year marketing and offtake agreement with BP Oil International to sell crude from the North Sea, and a three-year agreement to sell crude from the Malaysian oil field to commodity trader Trafigura.

(Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Tom Hogue)