KUALA LUMPUR: Dagang NeXchange Bhd’s (DNeX) associate company Ping Petroleum Ltd (Ping) has been awarded two licences that allow for development and production activities to be carried out on three potential greenfield oil and gas blocks in the UK Central North Sea upon viable discovery.

In a statement today, DNeX said the approval was given by UK’s Oil and Gas Authority to Ping’s wholly-owned unit, Ping Petroleum UK Ltd (Ping UK), which partnered with two established UK oil and gas companies namely Summit Petroleum Ltd and Azinor Catalyst Ltd on these licences.

The first licence is for block 22/14C, where Ping has a 50% working interest with Summit Petroleum Ltd. The block contains several low-risk exploration prospects proximal to nearby infrastructure.

The second licence is for blocks 15/17C and 15/18C, where Ping has a 50% working interest with Azinor Catalyst. Both blocks, said DNex, contain an oil discovery with potential for future development.

“These three blocks add significant breadth in diversity to Ping’s existing portfolio in the UK,” said DNeX’s group managing director Zainal Abidin Jalil.

"Ping aspires to be an exploration and production (E&P) company with a balanced portfolio of brownfield matured assets as well as exploration and greenfield development assets,” he added.

He said these blocks can reinforce Ping’s strategy to maximise economic development through synergies with operators of neighbouring assets or nearby undeveloped fields to unlock mutual value in these assets.

“Our acquisition into Ping has continued to generate positive results in generating profitability and improvement of DNeX’s earning resilience as well as provided us with the opportunity to gather the necessary expertise and track record of being an upstream oil and gas player via Ping,” he added.

Shares of DNeX closed unchanged at 41 sen today, which gave the company a market capitalisation of RM729.42 million. Over the past year, the stock has fallen some 29%.