Maurel & Prom Reports 11% Rise in H1 Sales

French mid-sized oil explorer Maurel & Prom reported an 11 percent rise in first-half sales on Tuesday, helped by the re-integration of its Caroil drilling subsidiary and a rise in production in Gabon.

Production, almost entirely coming from the African country, rose 7 percent to 25,134 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the first half of the year compared to a year ago, Maurel & Prom said in a statement.

In the second quarter, production was down almost 1 percent compared to the first quarter, however, because the company started work on water injectors to improve the performance of its wells, it said.

Production is expected to pick up in the second half of 2014 to reach the group's 35,000 boepd target, Maurel & Prom added.

Maurel & Prom had arranged last November an asset swap with Tuscany International Drilling, buying the African operations of Caroil, a business it once owned, and $50 million of bank debt in exchange for Caroil's Latin American operations and all of Maurel's stake in Tuscany.

The group, whose sales rose by about a fifth in 2013, said last March it was exploring promising new oil fields in Gabon and Mozambique and set itself an oil and gas production target of 35,000 barrels by the end of 2014.

Maurel & Prom, created 200 years ago as a trading company between Bordeaux and the French colonies, has long been the subject of takeover talk as analysts believe it lacks the scale to fulfill its potential on its own. Its CEO said last year he had been in contact with possible buyers.

(Reporting by Michel Rose, Editing by Alexandria Sage)