This morning, Range requested the Australian Stock Exchange halt trading in its shares pending the release to the markets of an announcement.

Earlier this week, Range said Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) was continuing negotiations and due diligence with regard to its proposed farm-in that would see the South Korean company take a 75% stake in Range’s Puntland acreage.

Range and KNOC had agreed to extend the due diligence period until July 31, primarily to allow more time for the acquisition of data located within Puntland and the evaluation of additional data recently acquired from a site visit to the old Conoco camp site in the Nogal Valley.

Data pertaining to the wells that Conoco had drilled in the valley included original well reports and wireline logs.

Range also said it and Middle East Petroleum Services had mutually agreed to terminate their technical services agreement (including farm-in and facilitation arrangements).

Range was already in discussions with several other interested parties and intended to engage a senior oil exploration team to head its oil exploration work.

The company said several parties had approached the Puntland Government requesting access to ground within the state, meaning the Government would be able to independently enter discussions on Range’s relinquished ground with potential joint venture partners.

However, Range would retain more than 100,000 square kilometres of onshore land encompassing the major identified potential oil basins in the Nogal and Dharoor Valleys, areas that were considered to be analogous to the Yemen Marib Shabwa and Sirr-Sayun Basins.

These Yemenese basins were mature basins with estimated resources of 19.25 billion barrels of oil and proven crude reserves of 9 billion bbl.