President Bharrat Jagdeo is to meet with representatives of Canadian oil exploration company, CGX Energy later this month and has warned that they need to move to drilling.

“I made it clear to CGX, they need to move beyond talk now to putting down a well,” Jagdeo told at a press conference on Friday. He said that company officials will be here later this month. “They’ll be here to talk about that and about their plans, specific plans, concrete action to move to that stage,” he stated.

The Canadian company, in the past months was engaged in processing data gathered from their seismic surveys and earlier this month, CGX’s Chief Executive Officer, Kerry Sully said that prospects are encouraging. “We have reached a key transition point in CGX’s history, having identified and enhanced a number of substantial exploration prospects offshore Guyana.

We have acquired interests in five Petroleum Prospecting Licences (PPL) covering 9.6 million acres (7.2 million acres net). We have gathered and re-interpreted the historic data on those PPL’s, participated in the first 2D solid-state seismic survey in the basin and initiated the first 3D seismic shot offshore Guyana. The processing of the 3D survey is nearing completion and the prospects are very encouraging,” he had stated.

Several months ago, Sully had told the media here that that the company will not be doing any drilling this year and data processing from the company’s 3D Seismic programme is ongoing. He had indicated that drilling could be done in CGX’s Corentyne block next year.

There had been high hopes for CGX’s exploration offshore since 2000. However Suriname’s eviction of an oil rig and other challenges delayed exploration in the most feasible offshore areas. According to news reports, there is heightened interest in oil in the Guyana/Suriname/French Guiana basin. However, this area remains one of the most under-explored in the world.