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Aug 9, 2017

Obsidian cuts full-year spending plans, mourns loss of Rick George

David French

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Obsidian Energy is cutting its full-year spending plans, citing the softening of underlying commodity prices.

The company, formerly known as Penn West Petroleum, is heavily weighted to light oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas; the latter two have come under pressure recently due to unseasonably mild weather. Obsidian says it now plans to spend $160 million this year, about $20 million less than originally forecast. The company left its production view unchanged at as much as 31,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The company has been rocked over the course of the last two months, first by civil accounting fraud charges filed against the company and three former executives by U.S. regulators; then by the death of oil sands legend and company chairman Rick George. Obsidian President and Chief Executive Officer David French made special mention of George’s passing in the second-quarter earnings release Wednesday.

“[Rick George’s] guidance and courage throughout Obsidian Energy’s restructuring and re-emergence was instrumental to forging our new path.” French said. “He leaves us with an imprint of the highest integrity and dedication to task that we will carry forward as a new company. We wish his family peace through their immeasurable loss.”

George Brookman, who heads up Obsidian’s governance committee, has taken the role of acting chairman while the company conducts the search for a permanent replacement.

George’s tenure at Obsidian came amidst an aggressive turnaround plan, during which the company cut more than three quarters of its near-$2 billion debt load.

While the company looks markedly different than the bloated entity that it had become, it still hasn’t been able to shake the past with the SEC charges still looming large. French expressed disappointment with the charges in June, saying the company reported and “fully remediated” the issues years ago.

The allegations are tied to accounting practices employed from 2012 to 2014, in which the SEC alleges former Chief Financial Officer Todd Takeyasu, former Vice President of Accounting and Reporting Jeff Curran, and former Operations Controller Waldemar Grab were complicit in moving hundreds of millions of dollars from the operating expense side of the book to the capital expenditures side. The SEC said the maneuver artificially reduced Penn West’s operating costs by as much as 20 per cent.

The company restated its financial statements in September 2014.