TomCo Energy (LON:TOM) said chief executive Paul Rankine is now working full-time for the company.
The group told investors that Toronto-listed Cassidy Gold Corp (CVE:CDX) announced yesterday that Sir Nicholas Bonsor resigned as a director and chairman and that Rankine resigned as a director, president and CEO of Cassidy.
TomCo owns oil shale leases covering approximately 3,000 acres in the Green River Shale Formation, Uintah County, Utah.
The oil shale firm has licensed Red Leaf Resources’ EcoShale In-Capsule process, an environmentally sensitive technology, to extract oil from TomCo's leases.
Last month oil estimates in the Holliday Block were upgraded from 123 million barrels in the indicated category to 126 million barrels in the measured category.
TomCo's strategy is to develop the Holliday Block lease as a similar follow-on project to Reef’s Seep Ridge using EcoShale, with the same targeted production of 9,800 barrels of oil per day.
Under the terms of the deal TomCo also receives all the data generated as Red Leaf brings its pilot operation into production in 2014.
Crucially, Red Leaf should also provide an objective valuation yardstick for TomCo, although the market has been slow to pick up on this.
The value is in Red Leaf’s relationship with the French oil major Total, which has agreed to invest US$320 million out of a total US$400 million developing the Seep Ridge project oil shale deposit. And it ploughed in a further US$25 million acquiring Red Leaf stock.