CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - Dec. 17, 2008) - Pearl Exploration and Production Ltd. ("Pearl" or the "Company") (TSX:PXX)(FIRST NORTH:PXXS) is pleased to announce that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of BlackCore Resources Inc. ("BlackCore") and has agreed to hire a new senior management team who were formerly with the highly successful BlackRock Ventures Inc. The new Pearl management team are also the current principal shareholders of BlackCore.
John Festival will take over as President and CEO of Pearl and will bring with him his core management team consisting of Don Cook as Chief Financial Officer, Ed Sobel as Vice President of Exploration and Chris Hogue as Vice President of Operations. This team has a strong track record of success in heavy oil, most recently with BlackRock. Prior to that, they were involved as management of Koch Exploration Canada. Keith Hill will return to his previous role as Chairman of the Board. Randy Neely, the current CFO and Dean Tucker, the current VP of Operations, will be leaving the Company to pursue other opportunities.
In conjunction with these management changes, the Company wishes to announce there will be changes to its Board of Directors. Upon the completion of the acquisition of BlackCore, the new Board of Directors will include Keith Hill as non-executive Chairman, John Festival, Brian Edgar, Lukas Lundin and one additional director to be named in January.
BlackRock Ventures Inc. was sold to Shell Canada Limited for CAD$2.4 billion in May 2006. The BlackRock principals were able to assemble a high quality group of heavy oil resource assets and raise capital to develop these fields into early production stage properties and were producing 16,000 barrels of oil per day at the time of the Shell takeover. It is believed that this execution strategy will fit quite well with the high quality asset base that has been assembled by Pearl.
Current Pearl President and CEO, Keith Hill, stated, "The purpose of this transaction is to create more value for our shareholders. We are very excited to be able to attract what is arguably one of the best heavy oil management teams in Canada to Pearl. We've built an enormous resource base to date and look forward to working with Mr. Festival and his team to unlock the value from these fields. We are firm believers that heavy oil will be playing an ever-increasing role in world oil consumption as new sources of light crude become more and more elusive. The untapped potential of North American heavy oil is significant and Pearl is positioning itself to take full advantage.
